Reed and Kathleen Kelley were loading up some of their horses and preparing to leave their ranch southwest of Meeker, which was in the path of the Lee fire, when a team of local volunteer firefighters drove up in three trucks on Tuesday afternoon.
The Cassidy Homestead located southwest of Meeker on the Sullivan Kelly Farm, was spared from the Lee Fire after a volunteer crew from Meeker scraped the land surrounding the property on Tuesday afternoon. The homestead was built in 1918 and last-minute mitigation efforts allowed it to survive. (Photo courtesy of Kathleen Kelley)The crew would do their best to save the couple’s home and any other buildings they considered important, but the Kelleys, who had been holding out for as long as possible, needed to evacuate immediately, Luke Pelloni, chief of Meeker Volunteer Fire & Rescue, told them.
They walked around the couple’s home and discussed mitigation efforts to help the property survive. Kathleen asked the crew if they could save the Cassidy Homestead, built by Tom and Maggie Cassidy in 1918, which was near their home.
“We have some hay stored there. See if you can save that, but don’t risk a life to do that. We can always buy hay,” Kathleen said she told Pelloni.
Pelloni asked if the couple had a tractor with a box blade, a tool that can scrape the ground. They did. A member of the fire crew made seven circles around the homestead, removing any vegetation, while others focused on protecting the main house.
Kelley said she isn’t certain if the crew of about a dozen people, which included Pelloni’s wife and son, a former student of hers, left after doing mitigation work or stayed through the night. She can’t comprehend how her home and the homestead, as well as the horses left behind, survived such an intense blaze without them staying. But they fought back as if the home was their own.
“He has a right to be extremely proud of what they did,” Kathleen Kelley said. After learning that the home and homestead were a little singed but intact, Pelloni told her that “we are local and we fight extremely hard because these are our people.”
Two uncontained wildfires that started on Saturday from lightning strikes are threatening the town of Meeker, the seat of Rio Blanco County. Initially, the Elk fire to the southeast, which has claimed more than 14,000 acres as of Thursday morning, was considered the more dangerous one, until two smaller fires combined to create the Lee fire to the southwest of town.
The Lee fire has quickly grown in size and claimed more than 45,000 acres over the past few days. Pushed by strong winds and hot and dry conditions, it almost moved into Meeker on Wednesday — halted only by repeated slurry drops from the air. Gov. Jared Polis mobilized the National Guard to assist the nearly 500 firefighters from across the region trying to contain the two wildfires.
Meeker remains under pre-evacuation orders. Officials on Thursday said they don’t expect the two fires, which are 11 miles apart, to merge. But if they do, it would put Meeker, a town of 2,400, and important powerlines in the area that supply electricity across northwestern Colorado, at severe risk.
“There have been multiple disruptions on the primary transmission lines in the area, but we have been able to maintain service to our member, the White River Electric Association, through backup sources. We will continue to monitor and assess any impacts to infrastructure as it is safe to do so,” said Tri-State spokesman Mark Stutz.
A firefighting helicopter flies over a ridge that was scorched by the Lee fire in Rio Blanco County just outside of Meeker on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)There are no outages on the White River Electric Association website, although Kelley said the power line to her home burned up, which will delay a return.
Residents of Meeker aren’t required to leave, just to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. The county has helped evacuate the elderly, the disabled and those in nursing homes who would find it hard to get out on their own, said Mandi Etheridge, Meeker’s town manager.
She described an eerie pall hanging over the town, but a determined spirit to keep everyone safe and to beat back the threat.
“We feel like we are in an old-timey movie with a sepia tone. In the afternoon, when the wind picks up, we are engulfed with smoke from the fire,” she said, coughing during the interview.
Many residents aren’t waiting around for the final go order, said Regas Halandras, a former mayor of Meeker. He noticed an emptier feel to the town and a more worried look on the faces of those who stayed behind.
Wildfires are par for the course in the mountain West, but Halandras, like Kelley, said they have never witnessed anything of the magnitude seen this week across lifetimes spent in Rio Blanco County. Meeker, which was founded in 1883, hasn’t ever been threatened in the way it is being threatened this week, Etheridge added.
Amplifying the stress Meeker residents face are memories of the Marshall fire in Boulder County, which destroyed 1,084 homes and businesses at the end of 2021; the Maui fire, which killed more than 100 people in and near the town of Lahaina in August 2023; and the Eaton and Palisades fire in Los Angeles, which destroyed nearly 7,000 homes and businesses at the start of the year.
All three moved quickly and unexpectedly into populated areas previously considered safe from wildfires.
A Meeker fire department truck stations itself at an out building across from W. Highway 64 as smoke billows on a ridge above it from the Lee fire in Rio Blanco County just outside of Meeker on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)“Those kinds of things have made it where we are all a little bit more afraid of these sorts of things,” he said. Wildfires can’t be taken for granted.
Halandras, however, said he can’t leave just yet. His wife owns the Elk Mountain Inn, which is sheltering firefighters and those dislocated by earlier evacuation orders.
“We are somewhat packed and ready to go if need be,” Halandras said, expressing confidence that the fire won’t come into the town.
The sleep-deprived Kelleys, by contrast, left town after the “yellow” or “ready” order came down. They didn’t want to test their luck a second time.
Angelo Theos, who goes by the name Butch, is keeping a close eye on the Elk fire to the south of his Theos Swallow Fork Ranch in case he needs to move his animals off the property or relocate the four sheep herds he has in the surrounding mountains. His shepherds stay in touch via cell phones, and if they are under threat, he has ATVs at the ready to go and rescue them.
“I am 77 and I have never seen anything like this. I talked to a guy in his 80s and he has never seen anything like this. It was a mild winter, not a lot of snow. Plus, we haven’t had any moisture,” he said.
Dry is a word repeated often by Rio Blanco County residents. At one point this week, relative humidity near Meeker was just 2% – the lowest incident commander Casey Cheesebrough and many firefighters have ever seen.
Preservation of property and lives is the primary focus of fire crews, who will then shift their efforts to perimeter containment, Cheesebrough said.
A West Metro Fire Rescue brush crew works with the Wyoming Hotshots to fight the 45,000-acre Lee fire burning near Meeker in Rio Blanco County. (Photo courtesy of West Metro Fire Rescue)After containment, there is a concern about how the fires might impact the upcoming hunting season, which is a major source of revenue for businesses in the region.
“There is a huge amount of habitat that is being affected. What I worry about most is in the wintertime. The elk and deer retreat to a designated winter range,” said Shawn Welder, who runs Welder Ranch and Outfitting Services with his brother.
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The White River Valley, on the eastern side of Rio Blanco County, is home to the largest migratory elk herd in the country at 38,000 animals. It is a major draw for hunters from across the country, and some of them are already cancelling their reservations.
“There is not a stitch of grass on the mountain. Our hunters are calling and concerned,” he said. He hunts near the headwaters of the White River, and thinks he and other outfitters in that area will be OK. But he worries for outfitters down the valley, closer to Meeker.
The hunting industry is already stressed by increasing state restrictions and cost increases on licenses that are keeping out-of-state hunters away. The loss of habitat could put some outfitters in the area out of business for good, he said.
Denver Post reporters Judith Kohler and Katie Langford contributed to this story.
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