Melvin’s not quite sure where Idiotville sits off the road, but he supplies part of the story of how it got its name. It seems that in 1933 Melvin was one of many loggers who fought the Great Tillamook Burn, a monstrous blaze that ravaged nearly 240,000 acres of prime forest, consuming 12 billion board feet of timber – enough lumber to build more than a million five-room homes.
There was no shortage of firefighters because so many people were out of work because of the Depression. In fact, after the fire was subdued, a few rogue firefighters wandered the region starting small new fires in order to keep their paying jobs.
We keep investigating and hit pay dirt when we meet up with Jim Reeher, a retired Oregon Fish and Wildlife worker. Jim tells us that after the Great Burn, thousands of loggers streamed into the Tillamook area to harvest fire-scorched timber before it rotted. Logging camps sprang up all over the region.
The camps consisted of specially built wooden houses designed to be cut in half and moved from one logging area to another, but some of the camps stayed put and became communities, complete with stores and schools. One such camp was so far up in the woods that neighboring loggers were fond of saying, “Anybody who’d live that far back is an idiot.” Jim says that Idiotville lasted a long time before fading into obscurity.
