A Look Back: The Tribune's shots of the '88 Yellowstone fire

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Twenty-five years ago, Yellowstone National Park suffered the worst fires in its history.

Multiple fires raged in and around the park, beginning in early June and continuing through late September. A total of 51 fires were recorded during the summer, with nine being human-caused and 42 being sparked by lightning.

The fires affected 793,880 acres — about 36 percent of the park — and, on Sept. 8, forced the closure of Yellowstone to all but emergency personnel for the first time in the park's history.

About 25,000 people fought the fires, which cost $120 million to suppress.

— National Park Service

The Tribune wrote a series of articles about the fires on the 20th anniversary in 2008:

Yellowstone: Back from the Ashes

Wildland firefighting changed after 1988 Yellowstone fire

Yellowstone moose suffered the most among park's large mammals

Yellowstone: Succession stages

Each Friday, The Salt Lake Tribune presents images from its archives in a special series called A Look Back. Every gallery of the series is available at http://www.sltrib.com/topics/lookback.

Here are some of the previous installments:

Early settlers' homes

Episcopal mission on Navajo land in Bluff in 1950

Hotels and boarding houses in the late 1800s

Pony Express, postal service and telegraph in Utah

Early churches in Utah and Wyoming

The mining ghost town of Mercur

Construction of the Salt Lake Tabernacle

Historic buildings in Utah

30 years of iconic rock and roll in Utah

Life on the Ute Reservation in early the 1900s

Women's fashion in the 1960s