Thousands of Children Helped Kid-Sized Forest Rise From Fire’s Ashes

Into a forest that died in flames 21 years ago have come vitality and hope, carried here by children.

It is a child-sized forest, only 20 acres. Until a Friday afternoon more than two decades ago, when fire burned through it, the spot was part of more than 50,000 green and pleasant acres in the San Bernardino National Forest.

Now it is a forest again, with a purpose: of the 10,000 visitors here each year, most are children from summer camps or on school trips.

The National Children’s Forest grew out of the ashes of the so-called Bear Fire that erupted on Nov. 13, 1970. It burned for six days, and when it was over, 49 houses and more than 53,000 acres of woodlands were destroyed.

In one generation, it has come back from embers and burned stumps to verdant life, and a lesson.

“This is a forest that reflects the concern and ability of children to give nature a helping hand,” said George Hesemann, 65, caretaker of the forest since it was created.

This is one of three national children’s forests created in 1971 and 1972 after forest fires across the United States.

Eastern Children’s Forest, near Covington, Va., is in the George Washington National Forest, and the Missouri Children’s Forest near Willow Springs, Mo., is in the Mark Twain National Forest.

Hunt-Wesson Foods and the U.S. Forest Service enlisted America’s youth to help restore fire-scarred forests. Hunt-Wesson food product labels that children mailed in were turned into pledges from the company to plant trees in the three children’s forests.

Since then, the Lake Arrowhead-based Rim of the World Interpretive Assn. has joined the Forest Service in caring for the forest.

In 1971, Hesemann was a junior high school science teacher in Lake Arrowhead and a summertime ranger here. When the time came for the forest to be reborn, he was asked to select the site. Hesemann, a volunteer, has managed it ever since, as founder and executive director of the all-volunteer group.

The site he picked was a burned-out saddle on Keller Peak, 7,000 feet high. About 200 volunteers took two years to reseed the plants and grasses, plant several thousand trees and build a trail slightly more than half-a-mile long.

A small dam and a water system help irrigate the acreage. Nesting boxes lure the birds that feed on insects in the burned remains of trees.

Boy and Girl Scouts and Campfire Girls did most of the work then, and even now come in to restore weathered trails, such as the one built with 197 tons of material wheelbarrowed to the site, said Hesemann. They call it the Phoenix Trail because it rose out of the ashes of the fire.

Woodblocks edge the trail as a guide for wheelchair-bound and blind visitors. Detailed signs explaining flora and fauna are in colorful print and Braille.

“Listen to the voices of the meadows,” says the Braille message at one stop, where the pleasant cacophony of mountain chickadees, Western bluebirds, green-tailed towhees and other birds are heard.

“We purposely designed the trail to be accessible to all, especially to the handicapped and blind,” said Hesemann.

In a time capsule at the trail head are the names of the 208,000 boys and girls from every state who sent in the labels to plant trees in the nation’s three children’s forests.