HARLOW FIRE & MARIPOSA COUNTY Another Perspective - PART -2 Quite a few people in later years put in a separate water tank that could hold 2,000 gallons of water and a gasoline engine on it with a pump. Should the power go off, they’d at least have some water to help fight fire. If you had seen this area before the fire came though, especially the DEADWOOD MOUNTAIN area, you wouldn’t believe what had happened. DEADWOOD was a beautiful mountain with heavy timber right on the top. Now, there is nothing but brush. OTHER FIRES We had a fire started in 1944 (one-half mile from where the later HARLOW FIRE started) and it came this way. We called the State and called in a crew of soldiers from HAMMER FIELD in FRESNO. We camped the forest crew at WORMAN ’s Hill. When they got ready to put in the fire line to stop the fire, Lily Light’s first husband, Dick MULLER, was running a bulldozer for the State of California (I was fire control officer for the Forest Service). We went up to the top of MIAMI MOUNTAIN LOOKOUT just about 6:00 o’clock in the evening. It was just getting dark. Dick said, “Start out down the mountain and I’ll follow you with the bulldozer.” We went right straight down toward the CHOWCHILLA RIVER with the fire line. We back-fired it and stopped the fire at METCALF GAP. Once, about 1947 or 1948, we had a fire on the north side of DEADWOOD. We couldn’t get ahold of Dick to run the bulldozer for us so they sent a man from SACRAMENTO who was supposed to be an expert. We showed him where we wanted the line put. He said, “I wouldn’t go down that mountain with a bulldozer or anything else. I wouldn’t walk down there!” Then Dick MULLER came and we showed him where we wanted the line; he said, “Where’s the ‘dozer, let’s go!” He started the ‘dozer and turned it down the mountain and when it got going too fast he’d run it ‘into a tree, run the blade into the tree, and then work the blade past the tree where it would go again, and again, He’d go on down the mountain. He went from DEADWOOD clear down to OAKHURST without any trouble at all and he stopped the fire. >From “ AS WE WERE TOLD” by the COARSEGOLD HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Eastern Madera County History, an Oral and Written History.