Utah has recorded more than 440 wildfires this year. When Governor Spencer Cox signed an executive order restricting fireworks statewide on June 25, his office said more than 75 percent of the season's fires had been human-caused. Lightning started the Cherry and Wild Goose fires. Fire officials determined the Cottonwood Fire was human-caused, though they have not said how it started. What started the Babylon Fire remains unknown.
The Cottonwood Fire began June 22 in the Fishlake National Forest east of Beaver and burned more than 10,000 acres in its first 24 hours, pushed by dry air and 50 mph winds through fuels with almost nothing left to give up. By the Forest Service's July 14 update, it stood at roughly 97,500 acres and 77 percent containment. It destroyed about 150 structures. Two days in, Cox said there was a very good chance it was already the most destructive fire in state history. The previous record holder, the 2018 Dollar Ridge Fire, destroyed 74 homes.
The Babylon Fire began June 26 in San Juan County, on land that includes part of Bears Ears National Monument and the Manti-La Sal National Forest. Within two weeks, it crossed 100,000 acres, Utah's first fire of that size since Pole Creek in 2018, and as of Monday, it stood at more than 106,000 acres and 50 percent containment. Five structures burned, and nearly 1,500 personnel were assigned at the fire's height. For a stretch of early July, the two largest active wildfires in the United States were both burning in Utah. Behind them came the Iron Fire near Eureka at about 42,000 acres, the Cherry Fire at 34,000, the Hastings Fire in Tooele County at 26,000, and the Wild Goose Fire near Scipio at 12,600.
Beaver Canyon
Tanner Larsen was finishing work on a new hiking trail at Eagle Point Resort on the afternoon of June 22 when his wife texted to ask if he had heard about the fire. Larsen is the resort's general manager. The blaze looked far enough away that reaching the canyon seemed impossible, and when the evacuation notice came, he left at 1 a.m. carrying a jiu-jitsu dummy and his wife's telescope. The resort's marketing director, Samantha Garcia, packed a few snapshots and some love letters into a backpack. The fire took nearly everything else either of them owned.
Eagle Point's own damage assessment, released after a July 9 media tour, counts 145 families who lost a home or condominium in the canyon. That is more than half the community. Roughly 300 of the resort's 600 skiable acres burned. The Canyonside Lodge and the Tushar Ridge Warming Station are gone, and four of the five chairlifts sustained damage. By unit count, the losses run to 105 condominiums and 40 cabins. No American ski area has taken damage like this since the Caldor Fire reached Sierra-at-Tahoe in 2021. Outside one condo in Mt. Holly Village, a child's ski sits burned into the shape of an S.
Owner Shane Gadbaw has run Eagle Point for 17 years. He laid off 13 of his 15 year-round employees after the fire took the summer business, the weddings, and the Crusher in the Tushar gravel race. Larsen and Garcia, the two he kept, both lost their homes. Gadbaw has committed to rebuilding, with no timeline yet, and announced a new 501(c)(3), BeaverTUF, to fund recovery work across Beaver County that insurance and FEMA will not cover. "I was once a community builder," he told the Deseret News. "And now I'm a full-time crisis manager."
The Skyline Lodge survived. So did the Monarch Lift, most of the north side terrain, and the snowmaking system. Gadbaw credits firefighters with saving that side of the mountain.
June 27
The season's worst day came on the Utah-Colorado border. A cluster of fires that ignited in Grand County merged across the state line into what is now managed as the Snyder Fire, about 30,000 acres. Crews that weekend reported single-digit humidity, gusts near 45 mph, and fuel moistures between 2 and 8 percent. The wind grounded the aircraft.
An initial attack crew, the firefighters sent into remote country to catch fires while they are small, was among the first on the Knowles Fire when it overran their position. The crew deployed their emergency shelters in the burnover. Three died. The Department of the Interior identified them as Emily Barker, 38, of the Forest Service's Rifle Helitack crew; Nick Hutcherson, 27, of the Kaibab National Forest; and Sydney Watson, 27, of the U.S. Wildland Fire Service's Rifle Helitack crew. The wind stayed dangerous enough that recovery teams could not reach them until the next morning. In Grand Junction, firefighters lined the road as the caskets came from the airport.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis declared an emergency and deployed the National Guard that same weekend. Three days later came the 13th anniversary of the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona, where 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots died in a burnover after deploying their shelters.
The Rain
The monsoon reached Utah this week. Storms over San Juan County on Monday dropped about two thirds of an inch of rain near Monticello and stalled the Babylon Fire's growth. In an ordinary year, that would be the end of the story.
Severely burned soil repels water. Rain sheds off it rather than soaking in, and it carries the ash, rock, and dead timber with it. The Cottonwood scar covers nearly all of Beaver County's watershed, which drains through a single canyon into the Beaver River and toward the county's water supply. "This fire is the entire shed," County Commissioner Tammy Pearson told Fox 13. At a community meeting Monday night, the county's emergency management director, Les Whitney, said flooding off the scar "will take houses out."
The work of the past two weeks has been getting ready. State crews, UDOT, Beaver City, and the Army Corps of Engineers cleared the Beaver River channel and are hauling burned timber out of the canyon by truck. Sandbags sit at the Beaver City rodeo grounds, with the sheriff's office asking residents outside the mapped risk zones to leave them for those inside. About 140 homes and buildings in the canyon survived the fire. The sandbags are for them. Homeowners at Kents Lake, Hi-Low, and Merchant Valley were allowed back in for two days last week to place bags around their properties, on the condition that they leave by 5 p.m. because of the flood risk.
Some of it is already happening. A debris flow briefly closed Highway 153. A flash flood warning went up for Piute County on Monday evening, and the National Weather Service expects daily thunderstorms over the burn scars through at least early next week. The sheriff has suspended residents' access to the burn area until further notice. In Juab County, near the Iron and Cherry scars, volunteers spent last week filling sandbags outside Eureka. The Fishlake National Forest expects the flood danger to last for years.
"Ash doesn't soak water in, so we're praying for sprinkles right now," Pearson said. The forecast calls for thunderstorms every afternoon this week.
