After hearing the Reverend Jason Lee describe the wonders of the Pacific Northwest in 1838 and declaring it was the United States’ Manifest Destiny to claim the Northwest for God and Country, sixteen-year-old Thomas Merriman begins planning his own destiny. At age eighteen, as part of the Bidwell-Bartleson Party (one of the first wagon trains to cross the Oregon Trail), Thomas leaves Independence, Missouri, for Oregon, with the goal of making a land claim, establishing a sawmill, and building a home for his future wife, who will follow along with his brother in two years. You could say Thomas’s life in the Oregon Country was extraordinary, but not the stuff of legends—until the morning of September 13, 1902, when at the age of seventy-nine he hitched up his wagon and headed east into an oncoming fire to help save the lives of his neighbors and friends. The fire, now known as the Yacolt Burn, was one of the largest forest fires in US history. This is the story of Thomas Merriman, hero of the Yacolt Burn!