Wildfire and Oregon forest fire history
Series — described at inventory level
Series · inventory level
Western Oregon forest fire history, 1765 to 2022: the ORWW educational wildfire websites (2004 B&B Complex, 2005 Deer Creek, 2007 Southwestern Oregon, 2008 Biscuit, 2009 Wildfire Economic, 2016 Douglas Fir Region) and the 2020 Labor Day Fires documentation. Based on Dr. Zybach's 2003 PhD dissertation, The Great Fires.
What this is
Fire is the argument that runs underneath the rest of this collection. The Soap Creek narrators describe a valley that burned regularly and then stopped burning; the Elliott tours cross ground shaped by old fires and by a century of suppression; the Osborne panoramas record a forest before and after. The creator's doctoral work made that the explicit subject: The Great Fires: Indian Burning and Catastrophic Forest Fire Patterns of the Oregon Coast Range, 1491–1951, Oregon State University, 2003, reissued by NW Maps Co. in 2018.
The series would gather that work with the restoration projects, reports and public testimony that followed it, and with the 2020 Labor Day fires material recorded at the time.
Inventory
| What | Detail |
|---|---|
| In the upload | A folder was created for this series on 21 August 2026 and is still empty: no files, no subfolders, as of the census of 27 August 2026. The series exists as an intention, not yet as a deposit. |
| Accessioned | 5 files whose names match this series were accessioned from elsewhere in the upload. Described from: public ORWW project pages; no files accessioned in the 2026 upload. |
| ORWW wildfire sites | Six educational websites on the creator's own catalogue: the 2004 B&B Complex, 2005 Deer Creek, 2007 southwestern Oregon, 2008 Biscuit, 2009 wildfire economics and 2016 Douglas-fir region, with the 2020 Labor Day fires documented separately. Together they cover western Oregon fire history from 1765 to 2022. |
| 2003 dissertation | The Great Fires: Indian Burning and Catastrophic Forest Fire Patterns of the Oregon Coast Range, 1491–1951. Ph.D., environmental sciences, Oregon State University. Second edition 2018, NW Maps Co., 364 pp. |
| 2020 Labor Day fires | A video playlist on the creator's YouTube channel, recorded during and after the September 2020 fires. |
| Reports and presentations | The creator's own project catalogue lists more than thirty-five projects and reports, a number of them on fire history and restoration. They have not been enumerated here. |
| Related in this collection | Fire runs through the Soap Creek monographs, the Elliott interviews and the Osborne panoramas; those are described in their own series. |
The originals
- The Great Fires — abstract and second edition (NW Maps Co.)
- The Great Fires — ScholarsArchive@OSU record
- 2020 Labor Day Fires — video playlist
- Oregon Websites and Watershed Project (ORWW) — project and report catalogue
Known gaps
- No deposit yet. Nothing has been uploaded for this series. Until something is, the description cannot go further than the published record.
- Scope is undefined. "Wildfire and forest restoration" could mean the dissertation and its sources, or the whole body of consulting and testimony that followed. That is the creator's call, not the Library's.
- Commercial and political material. Some of the creator's fire and forest-policy work is published commercially, and some carries political opinion that he has deliberately published under his business rather than under the non-profit. Both are identified by reference only.
- The second edition of the dissertation is a book for sale. The Library links to it; it does not host it.
What describing this properly would take
A conversation about scope, then a deposit. If the dissertation's own sources came with it — the fire chronologies, the burned-area maps, the early accounts — this series would become the evidentiary base under the oral histories, and the two would cite each other.
Provenance
- Creator
- Dr. Bob Zybach; NW Maps Co.; Oregon Websites and Watershed Project, Inc.
- Deposit status
- Folder created 21 August 2026; empty as of the census of 27 August 2026
- Published at
- nwmapsco.com and orww.org
- In this collection
- Inventory-level description only; no items published
- Rights
- Working edition. The creator publishes this material himself and retains all rights; the Library describes it with his participation and links to his originals. Per-series rights statements: /collections/zybach/rights/.
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