It was 20 years ago this week: President Bush paid a history-making visit to the High Desert
His planned forest ground tour was scratched by what became the region's largest wildfire in history
REDMOND, Ore. (KTVZ) – Twenty years ago this week, President George W. Bush paid a visit to Central Oregon – the first sitting president to do so – to promote his Healthy Forest Restoration legislation, but a late shift of plans was required due to a major forest fire that later became the region’s largest in history.
Several hundred people gathered at the Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center in Redmond, along with administration and local officials and the ever-present press corps, to hear from and for some get a thrilling chance to meet the president in person (before he spent the night at a home in Sunriver).
Bush was supposed to speak in Camp Sherman, but that plan had to change when the town was evacuated as the Booth and Bear fires, fought as the B&B Complex, had burned about 11,000 acres by then. So instead, the president and Forest Service officials took a helicopter tour of the fire area.
The two fires eventually merged and became Central Oregon’s largest forest fire in history, charring over 90,000 acres along the Cascade crest. That brought two closures of Highway 20 over Santiam Pass and left g a large scar of burned trees still visible to pass travelers.
The towering smoke plume as a backdrop to Bush’s call for reduced environmental rules for logging and thinning prompted whispers in Sisters (and probably elsewhere) that perhaps it was all arranged – prompting a story from the online magazine Slate entitled, “Black copters over Oregon.”
But the excitement many felt at a presidential visit to Central Oregon overshadowed for a time the fire concerns for many, as people rallied at the Redmond Airport to welcome the commander in chief (and dozens also showed up with protest signs, not all that unusual).
Bush told the friendly crowd, “Preserving and protecting our forests is not a political issue, it’s not a partisan issue – it’s a practical issue we must come together and solve.”
Two decades later, amid many major forest fires across the state and region - and with smoke again cloaking the sun and sky - the issues of forest health are ever more challenging to "come together and solve."
