The McCall Smokejumper Base: Parachuting Into Wilderness Fire
Near Mccall, Idaho
On August fourteenth, nineteen forty-three, two men named John Ferguson and Lester Gahler parachuted from a small aircraft above the Payette National Forest and landed near the head of Captain John Creek to fight a wildfire. It was the first fire jump ever made from the McCall Smokejumper Base, and the beginning of a program that has operated continuously ever since. The United States Forest Service established the McCall base in nineteen forty-three as one of nine permanent smokejumper bases in the nation.
Smokejumpers are elite wildland firefighters trained to parachute into remote terrain where road-accessible crews cannot reach quickly enough. The McCall base sits on the shores of Payette Lake, and its location is strategically valuable. Within easy flying distance are six national forests: the Nez Perce-Clearwater, the Sawtooth, the Boise, the Payette, the Salmon-Challis, and the Wallowa-Whitman.
When fires break out across that vast wilderness region, the McCall base is in the air within minutes. Stewart Lloyd Johnson, who served as base foreman through the summer of nineteen fifty-three, is credited as the guiding force of smokejumping in the region during its formative years. Each fire season the base deploys crews who drill in parachute rigging, fire behavior, wilderness survival, and first aid.
Today visitors to McCall can tour the facility and see the equipment and training grounds that have been at the center of Idaho's wildfire response for more than eight decades.
