The Leroux Fire Threatened Hotchkiss Water and 7X Ranch

Lightning started the Leroux Fire on Oak Mesa at 2:30 p.m. on August 3, 2025. By 2 a.m. Monday, Delta County had emptied 74 addresses along 3100 Road above Hotchkiss, Colorado.

The burn sat 1.5 miles east of Redlands Mesa, on the town’s drinking-water drainage and against the 7X Ranch. Crews later held it at 195 acres.

A Lightning Strike on Oak Mesa

Hotchkiss Fire District found the blaze along 3100 Road that Sunday afternoon and named it the Leroux Fire. At 7:32 p.m. the district still had it at 15 acres. After dark it pushed off the mesa toward houses, and the Bureau of Land Management brought in single-engine air tankers for retardant.

John Wroblewski, Southwest District fire mitigation education specialist for the BLM, said a lightning strike started the fire on BLM land. InciWeb listed the same cause the next day, with Hotchkiss Volunteer Fire Department and the Division of Fire Prevention and Control already on the hill with local BLM crews.

#Leroux #COFire #COMRD https://t.co/ohoVzguGXH Leroux: Leroux Fire Update 8/4/2025:Fire reported in the afternoon of 8/3/2025 Cause: lightning strikeCurrent land ownership of fire, BLM.Local BLM Southwest District fire crews, Hotchkiss Volunteer Fire Department, and DFPC are …

— InciWeb (@inciweb) August 4, 2025

Paonia and Crawford sent help. Forest Service workers were on scene with the BLM. The slope that mattered was southwest-facing and steep, and the weather was already hot, dry, and windy.

THE FIRST WEEK ON OAK MESA

1. August 3, 2025, 2:30 p.m.: Lightning fire is reported on Oak Mesa along 3100 Road.
2. August 3, 7:32 p.m.: Hotchkiss Fire District still has the burn at 15 acres.
3. August 4, 2 a.m.: Sheriff’s deputies and BLM crews order evacuations north of Redlands Mesa Road.
4. August 4, 5:30 p.m.: Command maps 179 acres and 0% contained.
5. August 6, noon: Evacuation orders drop to pre-evacuation and residents may return.
6. August 8, 9 a.m.: Team Colorado lists 195 acres, 74% contained, and 122 firefighters.
7. August 10, 9 a.m.: BLM posts the last regular update at 195 acres, 90% contained, and 41 firefighters.

Monday morning maps still showed a fire that could run. The ground fight that followed was built around the values under that map, not around a week-long runaway.

Hotchkiss Draws Water From the Same Drainage

The Aug. 6 incident status summary, signed by Type 3 incident commander Phil Daniels, put the threat in one line. The primary watershed for the town of Hotchkiss was threatened. The same form repeated that warning as a 12-hour and 24-hour cascading impact, then listed none at 48 hours once the lines held.

Steve Lipsher, spokesperson for the incident team, said crews were treating homes, watersheds, and roads as the values that mattered, the way an agricultural fire is fought around ditches and hay. That is a different job from chasing a timber run across a wilderness ridge.

Oak Mesa sheds toward Leroux Creek, and the creek is the drainage the town sits on. A fire that left the mesa edge did not have to reach Main Street to become a Hotchkiss problem. Ash, burned soil, and a cut-up slope can load a small-town water system long after the last flame is dead.

Red-flag weather kept that risk live after the perimeter stopped growing. On the days around Aug. 8, the National Weather Service had gusts up to 40 mph, relative humidity down to 8%, and afternoon temperatures in the upper 80s. Overnight, temperatures fell into the 50s and humidity climbed as high as 37%, which gave mop-up crews a window the daytime wind did not.

Cattle and a 1905 Castle on the Line

Every evacuation order named the 7X Ranch. The ranch sits at 31050 Oak Mesa Road, runs cattle and horses, and holds a 2,680-acre BLM grazing lease on public land that meets the property. The stone house on the place was built in 1905 and is known locally as the cattle baron’s castle. Oak Mesa Road was later closed at the Castle, which is how command described the landmark on the fire’s access road.

A working ranch on a mesa fire is a livestock problem before it is a postcard problem. Delta County Emergency Management told residents inside the zone they could get a short window to pull pets and animals if they showed photo ID, named the place they were going, and gave a time so crews could account for them. No extra help from area ranchers was requested in the first notices, but a livestock assistance number was already in the alert.

Wroblewski, speaking while the fire was still at 179 acres and 0% contained, described a ground-and-air fight built around houses on that same edge.

To combat this fire, we just have ground resources right now, actually being engaged, structure protection, walking the fire’s edge, and also air resources.

John Wroblewski, BLM Southwest District fire mitigation education specialist

He said the mix of evacuations, wind, and that southwest-facing slope would keep the job ugly, and that the people already on scene were enough to get a handle on it. The ranch, the creek, and the houses along 3100 Road were the handle.

Why Early Maps Showed 700 Acres

Monday’s first public maps put the Leroux Fire at 700 acres and 0% contained. By 5:30 p.m. the same day, command had it at 179 acres and still 0%. The fire did not shrink by 500 acres in one afternoon. The perimeter got measured again.

Two days later the Type 3 team still carried 179 acres, now at 35% contained, and even projected 179 acres as the final size. On Aug. 8 the same command posted 195 acres. That 16-acre bump is the difference between a first IR pass and a line walked with engines.

ACREAGE AND CONTAINMENT BY DATE

The 700-acre figure is the number that left the mountain first. The number that survived contact with the line was 195 acres. Public updates through Aug. 10 never posted a structure-loss tally for the Leroux Fire.

Local Crews Held the Mesa Edge

The people who kept the fire on the mesa were already in the North Fork when it started. Hotchkiss went first. Paonia and Crawford followed. BLM Southwest District and DFPC engines came up from Montrose. Forest Service crews joined the same edge Wroblewski described as a walk with structure protection.

WHO SHOWED UP ON OAK MESA

• Hotchkiss Fire District: First on 3100 Road Sunday afternoon, and the department that named the fire.
• Paonia and Crawford: Mutual aid on the ground while the fire still had no containment.
• BLM and DFPC: Federal and state engines, plus the Type 3 team that took command.
• Alpine Hotshots: A 20-person Rocky Mountain National Park crew later sent to a more active fire.
• Single-engine air tankers: Retardant on the first night, before the 2 a.m. evacuation order.

Team Colorado held command under Daniels through the mop-up push. The Alpine Hotshots left once the primary threat was judged minimal, which is how a Type 3 organization shrinks. Command planned to hand the fire to a smaller Type 4 team on Saturday, Aug. 9, then to the BLM. Brennon Ellis of the BLM Southwest Colorado Fire and Aviation Management Unit had it by the Aug. 9 morning briefing, with 95 people still assigned.

Wroblewski had already said the weather and the slope would be the problem, not a shortage of engines. Red-flag warnings on Aug. 8 and Aug. 9, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., tested the new line with 40 mph gusts while crews were still finding heat in the black.

74 Addresses Cleared Before Dawn Monday

The trigger was the fire coming off Oak Mesa toward houses. Shortly after 2 a.m. on Aug. 4, the Delta County Sheriff’s Office and BLM fire crews ordered people out. Deputies went door to door. Delta County GIS put 74 addresses in the zone.

EVACUATION ZONE ON AUGUST 4

• 3100 Road: From the Leroux Creek bridge north to the U.S. Forest Service boundary, including 7X Ranch.
• Forest in-holdings: Campers and private parcels along Forest Service Road 128 to Bailey Reservoir.
• Stoney Creek: The subdivision named in the sheriff’s order and in later incident updates.

3100 Road closed at Redlands Mesa Road. The first check-in point was Redlands Mesa Grange at 27595 Redlands Mesa Road. That site moved to the North Fork Annex at 196 W. Hotchkiss Avenue after the fairgrounds were taken for the incident team. Delta Health then canceled a blood drive set for Aug. 21 at Heritage Hall because the county was using the hall for emergency teams.

Orders lifted at noon on Aug. 6, 58 hours after the 2 a.m. knock. Residents went home under pre-evacuation status and were told to be ready to leave again. Delta County Emergency Management kept pointing people to Delta County emergency alerts and to the county wildfire page while the road stayed closed to anyone who did not live in the zone.

Mop-Up Outlasted the Evacuation Orders

By Aug. 8 the Type 3 team said the fire was not out, a word they would not use until the ground was dead cold, and that it could be weeks before that standard was met. The work was already mop-up. Firefighters walked deeper into the burn, chasing heat that could throw the line if the next red-flag day got into a stump hole.

WHAT THE LAST UPDATES CARRIED

• Money: The Aug. 6 status summary listed $1.4 million spent and a $4.5 million projected bill.
• Depth: Crews gridded 66 feet into the black from the fire’s edge, hands in ash pits.
• Heat: One crew had found 8 hot spots by noon on a single shift.
• People: Assigned firefighters fell from 122 on Aug. 8 to 41 on Aug. 10.

Ellis’s Aug. 10 morning update, the last regular one, had 90 percent of the perimeter contained and a BLM engine module still working the steep southwestern edge off a helicopter-dropped blivet. Resource advisors were already marking water bars and dozer-line repair, and any fence cut in the fight was slated to be put back. Fire managers said they expected full containment by mid-week and told the public to watch the Leroux Fire incident page instead of waiting on a daily briefing.

Folks may notice what looks like smoke rising from Oak Mesa from time to time. Look closely! What you’re seeing is more likely dust devils.

Brennon Ellis, incident commander, BLM Southwest Colorado Fire and Aviation Management Unit, Aug. 10, 2025 update

Ash, soot, and loose soil were spinning off the mesa in funnel-shaped columns. Ellis asked people not to call 911 on those columns. Oak Mesa Road stayed closed at the Castle, 3100 Road stayed the crews’ driveway, and firefighters kept putting bare hands into stump holes on a 195-acre burn that had already emptied the ranch, the subdivision, and the creek above town.