Nampa, Idaho • When the 2015 fire in Owyhee County finally burned out, a team of experts from the Bureau of Land Management followed closely behind the wildland firefighters assessing the safety of public land known as the Owyhee Front. The Soda Fire burned 280,000 acres in southwest Idaho and eastern Oregon. The blaze damaged 28 miles of roads and 150 miles of recreation trails, severely diminishing grazing acreage in Owyhee County and requiring the rescue of 283 wild horses.
But what concerned this BLM team were the abandoned gold mines that lay beneath the surface of the public land in the Owyhee Front — hazards exposed by the fire.