News – Sheridan Media
When the Elk Fire started one year ago, the two closest Sheridan County towns not only had things to worry about while the fire was burning, but a different set of problems emerged after the blaze moved away.
Saturday, September 27th marks one year since a lighting strike ignited the blaze on top of the Bighorn Mountains, west of the towns of Dayton and Ranchester.
The fire moved down the eastern face of the mountains, and came within 6 miles of the Dayton town limits.
While Dayton had to deal more with the fire directly, air quality tests showed that Ranchester, which is about 5 miles northeast of Dayton, was getting more of the smoke, because of how the wind was blowing at the time.
Ranchester Mayor Peter Clark says once the danger passed, new worries emerged regarding the water quality in the area.
“We didn’t know what was going to happen in the spring from the runoff, since all of our water comes out of the Tongue River. We weren’t sure if they had a real heavy rain event on the fire scar and it affected the Tongue River or if there was for some reason, there was a landslide and that would block the Tongue River, we couldn’t get water. Fortunately this spring was not as bad as we thought it was going to be.”
Mayor Clark adds the Ranchester Water Treatment System is fairly robust because it deals with a lot of sediment from upstream tributaries, such as Wolf Creek, Columbus Creek, 5-Mile Creek and the Little Tongue River, but there was little to no way to know, if there was something else in the water that came from the Elk Fire, that the system was not designed to filter out.
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Last modified: September 27, 2025