Smokejumpers Held the Enoch Fire at 20 Acres

The Enoch Fire burned 20 acres of private ranch land above Glade Park, Colorado, after a vehicle electrical fire on Aug. 3, 2025. Forest Service smokejumpers parachuted in, air tankers dropped retardant, and departments from across the Grand Valley joined an all-volunteer crew that keeps almost nobody at the station.

A month earlier, the assistant chief had told county commissioners the department’s money was beginning to fail. The fire never left the ranch. No one was hurt, and no building was lost.

How Did the Enoch Fire Start?

Grand Junction’s regional communications center took multiple calls about a smoke plume near JS Road and South 16 1/2 Road at about 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025. Mesa County Sheriff’s Office deputies found an active fire on private land of about 10 acres by 3 p.m., with structures already listed as threatened. By 6:30 p.m. the sheriff’s office measured the blaze at 20 acres, still on private ground, and asked the public to stay away so engines could reach it.

Louis Hotchkiss, an engine captain on the Mesa County Sheriff’s Wildland Fire Team, said the start was a car with an electrical problem. A sheriff’s office photo later showed the burned vehicle sitting along the road. Glade Park Fire Department arrived first. Hotchkiss’s team was close behind, because, as fellow engine captain Luke Williams put it, Glade Park sits on their back door.

“When we arrived, it was a little chaotic, but not too bad,” Hotchkiss said. Williams said crews got a hose around the whole fire while they worked the air drops, and that nearby structures were not harmed.

THE FIRST 24 HOURS

1. Aug. 3, 2025, 1:30 p.m.: Dispatch takes multiple calls of a smoke plume above Glade Park.
2. Aug. 3, 3 p.m.: Deputies close JS Road at South 16 1/2 Road; the fire is about 10 acres on private land, with structures threatened.
3. Aug. 3, 6:30 p.m.: The fire is mapped at 20 acres. Mutual aid from across the Grand Valley is on scene.
4. Aug. 4, noon: JS Road reopens.
5. Aug. 4, 2:00 p.m.: The sheriff’s wildland team reports the fire suppressed.
6. Aug. 5, end of day: A sheriff’s office release says the fire will be wrapped up, still held at 20 acres.

That clock is the whole incident. From the first smoke call to a suppressed fire was about a day, and the road was open again before the last mop-up.

Two Firefighters Held the Station

Glade Park Fire is staffed 100% by volunteers who cover 367 square miles, about 11% of Mesa County, plus the 183-square-mile Dolores Triangle if that ground is counted. The department’s own site puts the combined figure at 550 square miles. Department directories list about 18 volunteers and no career firefighters. When a fire starts, they are not sitting in a bay. They are scattered.

Mercedes Cameron, a Glade Park firefighter, described the first minutes as a phone alert, not a station bell. Only two firefighters were left at the station to keep the radios up, and she was one of them.

We get a call on our phones, because we’re all volunteers, we are all scattered all over. So, we get a call on our phones, mine sounds like a siren. That was at about one o’clock yesterday. As soon as the chief got up there, he called for air assistance immediately, so we had tons of air support… I saw four hotshots drop in with parachutes. There might have been more but that’s all I saw.

Mercedes Cameron, Glade Park firefighter

The people who came down under canopies were U.S. Forest Service smokejumpers, according to the sheriff’s office, not a hotshot crew. Cameron was counting parachutes from the ground. Cell service in the fire zone is thin, so the quiet from the line was treated as a good sign even as crews had trouble getting updates out.

That is the hidden load on a 20-acre fire. The local department can get there, and it did. It cannot staff a station, a ranch fire, and a second alarm at the same time. The chief’s first move was not to wait for more volunteers to drive in. It was to call for airplanes.

Smokejumpers Dropped In While Turner Gulch Burned

The Forest Service keeps about 320 smokejumpers at seven bases and sends them to parachute into remote wildfires with tools, food and water dropped after them. They are built for roadless country. Glade Park is not wilderness, but it is high, dry ranch and pinyon-juniper country with long drive times and a volunteer roster. Jumpers, helicopters, single-engine air tankers and large air tankers all worked the same 20 acres.

They did it in a week when Mesa County already had a much larger fire on the books. The same sheriff’s office wrap-up that closed Enoch also noted the Turner Gulch Fire near Gateway, then at 22,053 acres with 418 personnel, 10 crews, eight engines, 12 pieces of heavy equipment and four helicopters, and 49% contained. Winds on Monday had pushed that fire toward private cabins. Enoch still got jumpers and tankers because homes and outbuildings sat on the same ranch ground as the burning car.

WHO ANSWERED THE ENOCH FIRE

• First due: Glade Park Fire Department, all volunteer, with the sheriff’s wildland engines under Luke Williams and Louis Hotchkiss close behind.
• Law side: Mesa County Sheriff’s Office rural deputies, who closed JS Road and held the scene.
• Valley engines: Grand Junction Fire Department, Lower Valley Fire Department, Palisade Fire Department, De Beque Fire Department and Mesa County Fire Authority.
• Federal ground: Bureau of Land Management crews, plus Forest Service smokejumpers who parachuted onto the fire.
• Air: Helicopters with water, single-engine air tankers and large air tankers with retardant.

Williams called it a lot of moving parts that happened to line up. “Everybody was able to coordinate here on this one and get a hose there around the whole entire thing,” he said. Hotchkiss, looking past this fire, said the county has been getting bigger fires and that fuel work around homes has to catch up. He also told residents to watch red-flag days and Stage 1 rules, and to think about chains and stray sparks. Mesa County has been under Stage 1 fire restrictions on private land and BLM ground in the Grand Junction Field Office since Sept. 4, 2026.

Glade Park’s Donation Machine Was Already Failing

The air show is what held 20 acres. The bill for the local department still lands on donations, grants and a Friday-night movie series. 2024 tax filings for the Glade Park Volunteer Fire Department listed $81,441 in revenue and $79,839 in expenses. Grants and contributions fell from $162,696 in 2023 to $49,491 in 2024. Fundraising income fell from $34,028 to $24,568.

GLADE PARK FIRE MONEY, 2023-2024

Those 2024 figures left almost no slack. The mill-levy estimate in the district plan, $136,689, is the number the board thought it needed for day-to-day operations, not for new engines. Assistant Chief Bill Perrin said as much when he took the plan to the Mesa County commissioners on June 24, 2025, six weeks before the car caught fire on JS Road.

A Fire District in 2026, a Mill Levy in 2027

Commissioners approved a service plan that summer so the volunteer department could become a fire protection district, ask voters for a property tax, and keep money beyond TABOR caps. The fire protection district service plan said the department had lived on donations and an annual fundraiser since it began, and that costs were up, fundraising volunteers were down, and the apparatus was getting old.

Our funding is beginning to fail.

Bill Perrin, assistant chief, Glade Park Volunteer Fire Department, to Mesa County commissioners, June 24, 2025

Glade Park Fire became a fire protection district on Jan. 1, 2026. Mill-levy money does not start until 2027, so the department is still on donations, grants and fundraisers through this fire season. Perrin told commissioners the tax was for operating costs. The plan leaves the door open to paid staff later and to running ambulance calls that Grand Junction Fire Department handles now. It also recorded talks with Fruita about water rights in reservoirs on Piñon Mesa.

Personnel stay volunteer for now. The Enoch Fire is what that looks like in practice: a chief on the hill calling for jumpers, two people on the station radios, and a ranch fire that is small only because the rest of the valley and a federal parachute crew showed up before it found the houses.

Snyder Put Glade Park on Pre-Evacuation

Ten months after Enoch, lightning in late June 2026 lit a string of fires on the Utah-Colorado line. They ran together as the Snyder Fire, which Mesa County later listed at 30,202 acres. Three federal firefighters were killed. Pre-evacuation notices reached Glade Park, and state officials at a briefing put the community’s population at about 2,000. Residents hauled supplies to the same volunteer station that had sent Cameron’s crew to JS Road the summer before.

By early July 2026, a county meeting on Glade Park heard that the Snyder Fire neared full containment at 95%, with 402 people still assigned. Commissioner Cody Davis thanked the mesa. Sheriff Todd Rowell talked about the three firefighters who died. Enoch was not on that agenda. It had already done what a 20-acre ranch fire is supposed to do, which is end in a day, with the road open and the houses still standing.

The people who made that true were not a standing city force. They were volunteers whose phones go off like sirens, a sheriff’s wildland pair who treat Glade Park as the next driveway, and smokejumpers who left an airplane for a vehicle fire because the chief on the ground asked for them in the first minutes. The mill levy that is supposed to steady that arrangement still does not collect until 2027.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Caused the Enoch Fire Near Glade Park?

A vehicle electrical failure on private ranch land near JS Road and South 16 1/2 Road started the fire on the afternoon of Aug. 3, 2025, according to the Mesa County Sheriff’s Wildland Fire Team; a burned car was later photographed along the road, and the fire was not tied to the Turner Gulch or Wright Draw incidents burning elsewhere in the county that week.

How Do Smokejumpers Reach a Fire Like Enoch?

U.S. Forest Service smokejumpers fly from seven bases and can put as few as two or as many as 12 firefighters, plus cargo, on a fire in one trip, then work with the tools, food and water dropped after them, remaining self-sufficient for about the first 48 hours.

When Does Glade Park’s Fire Tax Start Collecting?

The department became the Glade Park Fire Protection District on Jan. 1, 2026, but mill-levy collections are written to begin in 2027, a one-year lag the department says leaves it on donations, grants and fundraisers, including its Friday Movies Under the Stars series, until that tax year.

How Big an Area Does Glade Park Fire Cover?

The department’s own figures are 367 square miles for Glade Park proper, about 11% of Mesa County, and 550 square miles if the 183-square-mile Dolores Triangle is included; directories compiled from 2024 federal incident reports also show the volunteers running 81 calls that year, most of them medical rather than fire.