When Colorado residents think about the devastating wildfires of 2012, their memories are directed first to the High Park fire and Woodland Heights fire in Larimer County and the Waldo Canyon fire in El Paso County – for good reason: those fires resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars’ of damage throughout the state, destroying more homes and creating a heavier burden on emergency crews than nearly any other succession of fires in Colorado history.

What people might not remember is that the fire season that year didn’t start with those summertime blazes, which were the most significant in a long succession of burns that year. Throughout the dry spring of 2012, smaller wildfires erupted across the Front Range, such as with the Hewlett Gulch fire in Larimer County and the Flagstaff fire in Boulder County.

Read more at The Loveland Reporter-Herald.