Crews worked tirelessly on Friday to extinguish a wildfire west of Gold Hill.
The Bureau of Land Management says the fire is 100% contained and burned 19.3 acres of brush and juniper.
The fire is under control, but not before striking fear in nearby residents.
Jill Clough owns the Gold Hill Hotel and Crown Point Restaurant near the scene of the fire.
“I actually was in the office, and it started raining ash,” she says. “I ran outside and me and my staff member met up, and I'm like, ‘what's on fire?’ And she's like, ‘I think it's your house.’"
Clough immediately called her husband and ran down the street.
“I looked up and saw the fire was up across the street and hung up on my husband and called 911, and they said they were on the way already,” she says.
Thankfully, her house was fine.
But this is not the only fire this month near Gold Hill.
On July 3rd, another wildfire — also called the Gold Hill Fire — burned four acres and fully closed State Route 342.
"We were shut down until about 6 o’clock at night,” Clough says, “which on a holiday weekend kind of really killed our business. They shut the road in both directions. We couldn't even get staff up there. We couldn't get anybody up here. So that that hurt a lot."
Clough says a third fire ripped through a nearby warehouse. All told, she says it's been a peculiar month for the region, given that fires are already rare to begin with.
“There was a house fire a few years ago, which was a couple doors down, but that was nothing like these,” she says. “These have been insane."
Clough has lived up here for six years.
Fire crews quickly put out Friday's fire, saving the hotel and many other historic buildings. Clough made sure their efforts didn't go unrewarded.
“We fed the firefighters 80 eating dinners last night and, gave them 80 breakfast burritos this morning,” she says. “We had staff on here at 6 o’clock cooking for them and making sure they were fed and taken care of."
As of Saturday evening, Ophir Grade remains closed as fire crews continue mop up work on the latest fire in Gold Hill.
Residents say they've been dealing with multiple fire starts over the last few weeks.
