It must be genetic. My Grandpa was a Fireman.

My Mother, Elsie, was looking through my grandfathers papers the other day and she ran across this document. (click on photo's for enlargement)

Back in the early 1900’s My grandfather, Wilhelm H. Rathjens, was the manager of the El Rancho Primero, a large ranch in the north end of the Laytonville valley. The ranch extended to the Main Eel River and took up all of the Woodman canyon area, also the Black Oak ranch, and Iron Peak area. I’m not sure of the exact boundaries, but the ranch was huge by today’s standards.

Wildfire was a concern back then as it is now, but the ranchers would burn the brush and trees to clear their land for cattle or sheep. Because of the fire hazard involved, large stands of brush were not allowed to accumulate. Even when I was a kid there was much talk about the Indians managing the land with fire, and it was considered to be necessary to burn. They burned very frequently.

Fires would often get out of hand, and burn far beyond what they were supposed to. The only method of fighting fire was by hand. They would use wetted gunny-sacks tied to a stick and wait for the fire to move into the grass land were they would wet the sacks and flail them onto the burning grass, or by building hand scraped fire breaks. A large wall of people with wetted sacks was the best way to stop a wildfire. Often, every able bodied person in the whole valley would be recruited and organized into fire fighting brigades. Every man woman and child would be involved in stopping a wild fire. Houses were protected from an approaching wildfire by burning the grassland around the buildings, and controlling the rate of burn with the wetted sack flails. Controlling a fire would become a large community effort. They packed water by hand or horse, everyone had to be fed. Everyone had a job to do with the fire until it was out. There never seemed to be much blame placed on anyone for starting the fire, probably because most of them were an accident.

Getting back to the document that my mother found. The document was dated 1922. This was before she was born, and she doesn’t recall any stories of fires of that era. But, I found that it was interesting that it was a “voluntary” position. Whatever that means. And, that it was the “California Board of Forestry” that issued it. The document in itself tells a lot, the fact that my grandfather was a “Voluntary Fire Marshal” was indeed interesting to me. There is nobody alive at this point that would know any of that kind of history, and my mother doesn’t remember any “stories” of Warden Grampa.

Does anybody know anything about what that document meant? Maybe Eel River Ernie would know. One of my Grandfathers nicknames was "Willie", do you think that he might have been the original "Piss Fir Willie?"