The Hayman Fire was a wildfire that erupted on June 8, 2002, in the Pike National Forest southwest of Denver, and it was deliberately set by a U.S. Forest Service fire prevention technician named Terry Barton. It burned roughly 138,000 acres across Douglas, Jefferson, Park, and Teller counties, destroyed more than 600 structures, displaced over 5,000 people, and killed six. At the time it was the largest wildfire in Colorado’s recorded history.
Who Started the Hayman Fire and Why
Terry Barton was a 19-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service on patrol to enforce a fire ban in the Pike National Forest near Lake George. She stopped at a campfire ring and, by her own written confession, set fire to what she described as a letter from her estranged husband. “I decided that I wanted to get rid of the letter. I stopped in the road and thought ‘I’m going to get rid of this thing right now,'” she wrote.1Denver Gazette. Looking Back: Scorned Wife Starts Massive Colorado Wildfire by Burning Letter Under red-flag conditions, the fire escaped the ring.
Barton was the first to report the blaze, initially telling investigators she had found an escaped campfire she could not put out. Forensic investigators rejected that account, concluding the fire had been “deliberately set and staged to appear like an accident.”2PBS NewsHour. Colorado Wildfire Her letter story also came apart under scrutiny: she gave inconsistent descriptions of what it said, her estranged husband initially denied giving her a letter at all, and investigators found no paper residue in the ring’s ash. Former Colorado Attorney General John Suthers suggested a possible “hero complex” motive, theorizing that Barton had planned to discover and extinguish the fire herself.1Denver Gazette. Looking Back: Scorned Wife Starts Massive Colorado Wildfire by Burning Letter
How Far the Fire Spread
The growth was explosive. About 64,000 of the fire’s eventual 138,000 acres burned on the first day alone.3Colorado Sun. Hayman Fire 20 Years Later A major eastward push on June 17 and 18 carried flames toward more populated areas of Douglas and Jefferson counties, and officials prepared to evacuate more than 40,000 people from communities including Evergreen and Roxborough.49News. First Responders Hayman Fire 20 Years More than 5,340 people were displaced in all.5Colorado Encyclopedia. Hayman Fire
The fire destroyed 132 homes and more than 466 outbuildings, along with commercial properties such as the Horse Creek Café and Saloon and the Lutheran Valley Retreat. Teller County lost the most homes, 82, followed by Douglas County with 45.6U.S. Forest Service. Hayman Fire Case Study – Structures More than 2,000 firefighters worked the blaze, and containment took nearly a month.5Colorado Encyclopedia. Hayman Fire
Who Died
Six deaths were linked to the fire. Five were contract firefighters from Grayback Forestry, Inc., of Oregon, killed on June 21, 2002, when their 15-passenger van drifted into the median of Interstate 70 near Parachute, Colorado, crossed back over two eastbound lanes, and rolled four times. Three occupants were ejected. The dead were Retha Shirley, Zackary Zigich, Jacob Martindale, Daniel Rama, and Bart Bailey, who died three days later in the hospital.7USDA Forest Service Lessons Learned. Parachute MVA Fatalities A sixth victim, a woman, died from an asthma attack following smoke inhalation.5Colorado Encyclopedia. Hayman Fire
What Happened to Terry Barton
Barton was prosecuted in both federal and state court. In the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, Judge Richard P. Matsch sentenced her on February 21, 2003, to six years in federal prison followed by four years of supervised release for setting Forest Service timber afire, and ordered her to pay $14,671,510 in restitution to the U.S. Forest Service. She served her sentence at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, and was released on June 2, 2008.8U.S. Department of Justice. Terry Lynn Barton Release
She also pleaded guilty to state arson charges brought by the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office. Her original 12-year state sentence, set to run concurrently with the federal term, was overturned by the Colorado Appeals Court.9The Gazette. Woman Who Started Largest Fire in Colorado History Sentenced to 15 More Years of Probation In March 2008, District Judge Thomas Kennedy resentenced her to 15 years of probation and 1,500 hours of community service, meaning no additional prison time on the state charges.10Denver Post. Hayman Fire Starter Won’t Serve State Jail Time
Her state restitution was set at approximately $27.5 million, an amount prosecutors acknowledged would likely never be paid in full.11The Intelligencer. Colorado Wants Fire Starter to Pay $27M In August 2018, Judge William Bain extended her probation another 15 years. By then the total obligation had grown to roughly $42.5 million with accrued interest, and her monthly payments were set at $150. Judge Bain ordered her to obtain full-time employment and said the order “in all likelihood means Miss Barton is going to spend the rest of her life paying for restitution.”12KOAA News. Sentence Extended for Woman Who Started Hayman Fire
Whether the Federal Government Paid
Insurers including State Farm and Allstate sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act, seeking more than $7 million to recover payouts to policyholders. They argued the government was liable because Barton was a federal employee.13Denver Post. Insurers Want Feds to Pay for Hayman Fire In November 2008, U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel ruled for the government. “When Barton violated the Fire Ban she was not doing the work assigned to her, what was necessarily incidental to that work or what was customary in the Forest Service’s business,” Judge Daniel wrote. The court also found the insurers had not proved Barton or other Forest Service employees were negligent in fighting the fire once it started.14Denver Post. Federal Government Wins Lawsuit Over Hayman Fire
The Cost of the Fire
No single figure captures the full toll. Federal suppression alone cost about $42 million, and total immediate 2002 expenditures exceeded $207 million.15Headwaters Economics. Full Wildfire Costs Report5Colorado Encyclopedia. Hayman Fire Jefferson County assessed a 50 percent reduction in property value for burned acreage and up to 100 percent for burned structures, cutting local tax revenues for years.16U.S. Forest Service. Hayman Fire Social and Economic Issues
Lasting Damage to Water and Forests
The Hayman Fire burned through watersheds that supply more than 70 percent of Denver’s drinking water.17NR Fire Science. Post-Fire Water Quality Research Stripped hillsides funneled sediment, ash, and debris into streams and reservoirs with every rainstorm. The Hayman and earlier 1996 Buffalo Creek fires together dumped more than one million cubic yards of sediment into Strontia Springs Reservoir, four times its pre-fire load of about 250,000 cubic yards.18Denver Water. Legacy of Colorado’s Largest Wildfire Roughly 13 percent of Strontia Springs’ storage capacity has been permanently lost to sediment.19Denver Water. It’s a Dirty Problem, Somebody’s Gotta Solve It
Water quality collapsed in burned drainages. Suspended-sediment concentrations in Fourmile Creek reached 55,000 milligrams per liter, compared with 1 to 83 mg/L in the unburned Pine Creek nearby, and streams in the burn area exceeded Colorado aquatic-life standards for arsenic, copper, iron, manganese, and mercury. On July 7, 2006, streamflow in West Creek surged from 62 to 2,170 cubic feet per second in 45 minutes, causing about $11 million in damage to Colorado State Highway 67.20USGS. Effects of the 2002 Hayman Fire, Colorado Research 13 to 14 years after the fire found stream nitrate levels in severely burned watersheds still ten times higher than pre-fire levels.17NR Fire Science. Post-Fire Water Quality Research Denver Water has spent more than $27 million on sediment removal, water-quality treatment, infrastructure, and reclamation since the fire.18Denver Water. Legacy of Colorado’s Largest Wildfire
The fire also burned through about 40 percent of the range of the Pawnee montane skipper, a federally threatened butterfly found only in a roughly 38-square-mile stretch of the South Platte River drainage.21U.S. Forest Service. Hayman Fire Case Study – Pawnee Montane Skipper Reforestation has taken decades. For more than ten years, Denver Water worked with volunteers and the Colorado State Forest Service to plant about 25,000 trees a year on fire-scarred land, and in 2010 launched the “From Forests to Faucets” partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, a $66 million initiative to treat more than 48,000 acres of national forest.18Denver Water. Legacy of Colorado’s Largest Wildfire Reporting from 2024 and 2025 shows the burn scar still dotted with skeletal dead trees, and Colorado State University researchers have noted that western forests are broadly taking longer to regenerate as climate change makes conditions inhospitable for seedlings.22KUNC. Hayman Fire
Where the Hayman Fire Ranks Today
The Hayman Fire held the record as Colorado’s largest wildfire for nearly two decades. In 2020, three fires surpassed it in a single season: the Cameron Peak Fire (208,913 acres), the East Troublesome Fire (193,812 acres), and the Pine Gulch Fire (139,007 acres). Hayman now ranks fourth at 137,760 acres. Eight of the ten largest fires in state history have occurred since 2012.23Fort Collins Coloradoan. How Colorado Wildfires Compare in Size, Destruction to LA Wildfires24CSU REDI. Battle Scars: Trends in Wildfire Size and Impact Across Colorado