Marble Cone Fire

Marble-Cone Fire
Date(s)	August, 1977 (PDT)
Location	Big Sur, California
Statistics
Burned area	~178,000 acres (720 km2)
Land use	Wildlands
Impacts
Deaths	0

The Marble Cone Fire was a wildland fire which burned for three weeks in August, 1977 in the Santa Lucia Mountains high country, at the Big Sur area of Monterey County, California. By the time it was extinguished, it had burned about 178,000 acres (720 km²) in the Santa Lucia Mountains, known as the Ventana Wilderness, making it the largest wildfire in recorded California history at that time. The fire burned 90% of the vegetation cover in the upper Big Sur River watershed. This posed the threat of serious flooding in the Big Sur River Valley, where a much smaller August 1972 fire had led to severe flooding later that year. This time, the rains were moderate and resulted in no major flooding problems.

External links

• "Changes in Distribution of Owl Species Subsequent to Habitat Alteration by Fire", Bruce Elliot, California Department of Fish and Game Western Birds 16:25-28, 1985
• "Burn Species", David Rogers, Double Cone Quarterly, Spring 2000