Were wildfires as prevalent in the US (maybe other places) before there were a lot of people living in forests and grasslands?

I have seen records of prairie fires in Illinois in the 1800’s, where people would drive their horse and buggy out and have a picnic across the river by the light of the fire. No effort was made to put it out.

In books I’ve read, pioneer families did attempt to put out fires. However, prevention was better considering they only had wells, and bodies of waters to fight with. (Hand dug trenches, homes built away from brush-etc).

Were the fires prevalent without people? In dry years, I’d say there were fires with and without people. However, fires are more often started by humans so suppression came into play.

Lightning is a major cause of wildfires.

Most of the current wildfires have been attributed to natural causes, I think there are only a few caused by humans and only one or two of them are suspected to be intentional.

It was not uncommon for native Americans to set fires to drive the game into their killing fields. Sometimes they got out of hand.

Globally, humans have surpassed lightning as the primary igniter; an estimated 90% of wildfires are human-caused.
[Source]

@SpatzieLover no offense, but I will trust the people fighting the fires as to the cause.

Controlled burns and backfires started to suppress fires can’t really be counted as wildfires.

There was much less danger of the types of wildfires we now see, historically. First, a little-known fact is that the Native Americans were forest and wildlife managers. The forests were not the tangled masses we think of, the ones we see today when a plot is left to its own devices. The Native Americans used proscribed burns to maintain the forests, so the landscape was vastly different.. those arriving described the forests as ‘park-like’.

With or without human aid, an important part of a forest cycle is periodic fire. It gets rid of accumulated underbrush, dead trees and plant material, and other combustible things, as well as adds to the soil and promotes new growth. Some plant species evolved around fire to stimulate germination.

So, the answer to your question is yes, there were wildfires, but they were generally not to the scale that we see today because we now have a policy of suppressing fires. Brush and wood accumulate to the point where one fire can quickly turn out of control due to the ample fuel available.

Right ^ @MissAnthrope

I live in a high danger wildfire/forest fire zone up here in the Sierra foothills of Northern Ca.
The biggest fires in my county in the last 10 years have been human induced. Negligent/illegal campfires, other misc. causes and a lot of lawn mower fires.
Just had a home and barn burn a mile and a half from my home last week. A mower sparked a fire and up in smoke it all went. 10 acres total.

It takes nothing to burn dozens of acres if not hundreds and thousands in a heartbeat in these hills and mountains from June through October, November.

Scary seasonal fire fears up here, and nobody takes kindly to fire foolishness.

Where I was raised in NJ, there are wildfires every summer at the meadowlands because the are is so dry. At this point, they only wait for it to subside on its own, but when it becomes dangerous and near peoples home, it is tended to.