By Michael Pope

“It was like something out of an old John Ford Western: on the morning of June 1, 2018, a coal-fired locomotive slowly chugged its way through the picturesque San Juan National Forest in southwestern Colorado. The train was part of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, a national historic landmark and local tourist attraction that has run continuously between the two towns since 1881. As the engine thundered up Shalona Hill, its iconic smokestack belching fiery ash and black smoke, a few smoldering embers managed to escape its exhaust screen and land in the dry brush next to the tracks.

Just like that, the sixth-largest wildfire in Colorado history had begun.”