American Experience: The Big Burn (2014)

This feature-length documentary takes an in-depth view of the Great Fire of 1910, which ravished three Northwestern US states in the driest summer on record at that time. The wildfire incinerated 3,000,000 acres in Idaho, Montana, Washington and part of British Columbia. Along the way, the audience learns Teddy Roosevelt's interest in preserving America's forests and the man he appointed to the job of doing that: Gifford Pinchot, who founded the US Forest Service and changed the way huge tracts of forests were maintained, before becoming governor of Pennsylvania during the Great Depression.