Dropping Into Wildfire: Missoula Aerial Fire Depot

The Missoula Aerial Fire Depot sits at the west end of Missoula International Airport and serves as the operational hub for the USDA Forest Service's Northern Region — roughly 25 million acres of National Forests stretching from eastern Washington across Idaho and Montana into North Dakota and South Dakota. The depot was formally established in the early 1950s after the Northern Region demonstrated that aircraft could dramatically improve the initial attack on remote fires. By the time this brochure was printed, the campus also housed the Northern Forest Fire Laboratory and the Missoula Equipment Development Center, both early centers of applied fire science.

Smokejumpers — the brochure calls them "the paratroopers of the Forest Service" — have been parachuting to wildfires since the first operational jump on Idaho's Nez Perce National Forest in 1940. The text notes more than 120,000 total jumps since then, a cumulative figure consistent with the late 1960s to early 1970s. Most jumpers are college students; all complete a four-week course covering parachute technique, physical conditioning, and firefighting before making eight practice jumps. Page 4 diagrams a jumper's full kit: padded protective jumpsuit, logger-type jump boots (reinforced for rough landings in timber and brush), main parachute, reserve parachute, and a personal gear bag for tools and supplies.

The visitor center offered tours of the parachute rigging loft and flight line, plus motion pictures, dioramas, and exhibits on wildfire detection and suppression. A small campus diagram on page 3 labels the visitor center, parachute loft, and adjacent aircraft parking. The back panel carries a salmon-pink directional map keyed to Interstate 90, pointing drivers off at Reserve Street or Orange Street toward the depot — with Smokey Bear's familiar admonition ("Only you can PREVENT FOREST FIRES") running vertically beside it.

Also covered is the era's second main suppression tool: converted military tanker aircraft, refitted with belly tanks, dropping fire retardant chemicals mixed with water onto active fires or hot spots. The brochure notes, perhaps for a skeptical public, that the chemical solution "also serves as a fertilizer for plants and trees."