Curtis Martin sat in his bulldozer in the smoky night and watched flames leap toward the cabin that his family built half a century ago.

He lowered the blade and gouged a dirt path through the sagebrush and dry grass that burned almost as readily as gasoline.

A friend, Casey Collman, arrived with a second dozer.

This one had a more powerful light, the only illumination, besides the flames, on the shoulder of Juniper Mountain in northern Malheur County.

It was just after midnight July 12.

The Cow Valley Fire had started about 10 hours earlier. The human-caused fire, which is under investigation, had raced through thousands of acres of rangeland desiccated by six weeks with little or no rain and a week of triple-digit high temperatures.

The flames spread onto the 6,000 acres that Martin’s dad bought in 1956.

Martin, a Baker County cattle rancher and former president of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, remembered when the cabin was built in 1973.

It was the same year he graduated from Vale High School.

Martin chuckled as he talks about the older house that was torn down to make room for the cabin. The existing building was so far out of plumb — a foot and a half from one end to the other, as Martin recalls — that he wondered how any of the doors stayed shut.

He and Coleman saved the cabin.

But the danger hadn’t passed.

Later on July 12 the wind shifted and the fire bore down on the cabin from a different direction.

This time Martin’s son, Sam, who is a firefighter, asked for single-engine tankers to drop retardant. The pilots saved the structure, Curtis Martin said.

“I’d sure like to find out who they are and buy them a big steak dinner,” he said on July 18. “They have a lot of courage.”

By that day the Cow Valley Fire had been tamed. The blaze was 77% contained and hadn’t grown in the past few days.

But with 133,400 acres burned, its effects, both economic and environmental, will persist for years, Martin said.

He said he talked with a local rancher, a man in his 90s, who had never seen a fire that rivaled this one in size.

Fast-growing fire

The Cow Valley Fire started near Indian Gulch Road north of Highway 26, about 9 miles east of Ironside.

For the first day or so the blaze burned primarily private land.

But as the wind propelled flames for many miles to the southeast, toward Brogan, Willowcreek and Vale, it spread onto thousands of miles of public land, part of the Bureau of Land Management’s Vale District.

Cattle graze the now-blackened ground, public and private, mainly during the spring and summer, Martin said. He estimated 80% to 85% of his land burned.

The damage was notably worse, he said, in areas where cattle had not yet grazed this year.

Where the animals had munched some of the grass, Martin said the lesser fuel load meant the fire burned less severely, in a “mosaic” pattern that includes patches of unburned grass.

Martin said he and his sons, Sam and Casey, all of whom had cow-calf pairs on the property — about 250 pairs in all — would have kept the animals there for another 30 to 45 days if not for the fire.

Instead, they had to move the animals, some of which were trucked back to Baker County.

Martin said they likely will need to buy more hay than expected or possibly rent pasture.

He said Casey had to euthanize one calf that was severely burned.

“It was nothing short of miraculous that more cattle weren’t lost,” Curtis Martin said.

Those are short-term costs.

But Martin said he fears that much, if not all, of his land won’t recover sufficiently to allow cattle to graze in 2025.

“The economic impact is going to be pretty strong this year, and in the future it’s going to be quite substantial,” he said.

Top concern now is erosion

Martin said he fears the fire in places burned so hot that it killed all the vegetation, including the relatively deep roots of the native Idaho fescue and bluebunch wheatgrass that made the area so valuable for livestock grazing.

With expanses of bare dirt exposed, rain, such as could come with a summer thunderstorm or later this fall before the ground freezes, could result in mudslides, Martin said.

He is advocating for aerial seeding of fast-growing grasses that could quickly stabilize the soil.

He’d like to see intermediate wheatgrass among the species sown, a perennial grass that had has planted on some of his land. Martin said the grass stays green longer than some species — indeed, he saw sections of range where the fire burned past the still somewhat lush wheatgrass but didn’t scorch it.

Martin said he discussed the issue with Lisa Charpilloz Hanson, director of the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

State Sen. Lynn Findley, a Republican from Vale whose district includes the area burned in the Cow Valley Fire, also has made a public announcement about potential federal aid that could be available for ranchers affected by the blaze.

In addition to the loss of grazing land and the associated expenses, there are miles of fence that will need to be rebuilt, Martin said.

He also worries about how wildlife, including deer and sage grouse, will be affected.

Deer are more capable of moving to areas with good forage. But sage grouse, as their name implies, depend on that shrub.

Martin said sagebrush won’t return nearly as quickly as grasses will.

“They lost a lot of habit,” he said, “but the adaptability of wildlife is pretty amazing.”