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i lost a 29 cabriolet in this fire. as far as i know the body is still there.
lost a 48 woody in the same fire.


1961 Harlow Fire Mariposa County California
According to the Sierra Star of Oakhurst California “The Harlow fire of 1961, the fastest burning fire in California history, created a firestorm that burned as much as 175 acres per minute, sweeping more than 18,000 acres in two hours destroying Ahwahnee and Nipinnawasee in some 15 minutes as it raged from around Stumpfield Mountain in Mariposa County to the very edge of Oakhurst in two days.”

Nice. I used to work for the Forest Service and part of my job was locating old sites like these in the woods. And being in the Sierra Nevada near the heart of the "Motherload" they were all over the place. One afternoon I chased down a line of old busted up penstock that had been laid on the side of a canyon eons ago. After about an hour of hiking I found the penstock had terminated at an old adit. And in the adit were two pnuematic hand drills with their star bits leaning up against the wall as if the miners had just left. Below the adit was a concrete pad with a huge two stage Chicago Pnuematic (CP) air compressor bolted to the surface. And in the drainage below that was a Pelton Wheel half buried in debris. Nobody had been to that site in decades. How the hell that stuff got in there was almost beyond belief as it was in a very remote location. All I can say is that it was all packed into the woods back in the day when men had strong backs to put into their work.