By J.C. Thomas
By mid-1965, the singer-songwriter Johnny Cash had become a huge star – a prolific, genre-spanning artist with a series of big hits on both the pop and country charts. He had moved with his first wife, Vivian Liberto, and their four daughters, to a hilltop mansion in Casitas Springs. The unincorporated community in Ventura County is close to Lake Casitas and on the edge of Los Padres National Forest, where Cash enjoyed fishing and camping.
With his penchant for dressing all in black and lyrics alluding to the sinful side of life, Johnny Cash cultivated the image of an outlaw. He had also developed some serious addiction issues, along with a few arrests, to corroborate it all. Johnny Cash’s persona – and the real person – had a genuine dark side. His actual criminal record, however, reads less like the ballad of a country outlaw, and more a fable of foolish blunders expanding into absurdity.
Just a month before one of Cash’s biggest blunders, he was arrested and held overnight in jail in Starkville, Mississippi. His charge: Trespassing on private property to pick flowers. This crime would be a mild precursor to the events of June 27, 1965. Back in Ventura County, Johnny Cash and his nephew, Damon Fielder, went on a fishing trip in Los Padres National Forest in a camper truck. In his 1997 autobiography, “Cash,” the singer talks about his camper, which he had named “Jesse” after Jesse James, “because I was an outlaw and it had to be one, too.”
In his autobiographical account of the events that followed the fishing trip, Cash writes that Jesse had a squeaky wheel, so he pulled over to the side of the road. Oil from a cracked bearing dripped onto the hot wheel and started a small grass fire, which quickly spread up a nearby hillside. When fire-fighting crews arrived, Cash panicked and pretended to be fishing in the nearby Sespe Creek, feigning obliviousness to the raging fire that had burnt out his camper and all the surrounding land. When a man from the forestry service asked Cash if he started the fire, he recalls saying, “I couldn’t lie, but I tried. ‘My truck did,’ I said.” According to Cash, the man took his information and left, leaving him stranded with a burned-out truck. He slept on the ground and eventually got home by walking and hitchhiking.
Related: Experience the Magic and Music of Memphis, Tennessee
Damon Fielder’s account of the fire is quite different from his uncle’s. The biography “Johnny Cash: The Life” by Robert Hilburn includes Fielder’s recollections of an ill-fated fishing trip that began with Cash driving erratically while loading up on whiskey and pills. This lead to a falling out, with Fielder leaving Cash to go and fish alone, and later smelling smoke. He rushed back to the camper to find Johnny failing to extinguish a fire, matches nearby. “Damon figured his uncle had started the fire to keep warm and in his drugged state had let it get out of control,” Hilburn writes. According to Fielder, Johnny Cash refused to leave the area, now ablaze. Fielder ran for help and returned later to help rescue his uncle with a fire helicopter and crew, almost certainly saving his life.
The fire that started by Johnny Cash’s camper spread across three mountains and destroyed 508 acres of vegetation in Los Padres National Forest. The area was – and still is – a sanctuary for endangered California condors, the largest bird in North America. Before the forest fire, 53 condors were present in the sanctuary; only four remained after the fire.
The saga continued with the federal government suing Johnny Cash for causing the devastating forest fire. In his biography, Cash described his own belligerence during a deposition in the case. “I was such a mess that I didn’t care. I went into the depositions full of amphetamines and arrogance, refusing to answer their questions straight,” he wrote. Cash, perhaps not a bird lover, further extended his ill will toward the endangered California condors. His account of the deposition is as follows:
“Did you start this fire?”
(EXCERPT FROM “CASH” BY JOHNNY CASH)
“No, my truck did, and it’s dead, so you can’t question it.”
“Do you feel bad about what you did?”
“Well, I feel pretty good right now.”
“But how about driving all those condors out of the refuge?”
“You mean those big yellow buzzards?”
“Yes, Mr. Cash, those yellow buzzards.”
“I don’t give a damn about your yellow buzzards. Why should I care?”
The federal government won $125,172 in damages. After avoiding a court date with claims of illness, Cash later settled the case for $82,001 (about $704,000 in today’s money).
A copy of Johnny Cash’s FBI file, obtained by MuckRock via a Freedom of Information Act request, summarizes the charges related to the fire. It reads:
“On June 23, 1967, a complaint for damages was filed against John R. Cash, also known as Johnny Cash, in United States District Court, Los Angeles, California, asking for $125,127.52 and alleging that a fire on June 27, 1965, destroyed 508 acres of Los Padres National Forest watershed near Sespe Creek. This fire reportedly was started by hot gases and sparks from a defective exhaust system on Cash’s camper-truck. According to the suit, the camper-truck became stuck on a road along the Creek. When Cash attempted to free the vehicle, he gunned the motor setting off the gas and sparks. The Government alleged that Cash failed to take reasonable precautions to control the fire and failed to report it to proper authorities.
(EXCERPT FROM JOHNNY CASH’S FBI FILE)
Final judgment was entered on June 30, 1969, in favor of the United States in the amount of $82,000 with interest thereon at the rate of six percent per year from February 15, 1969. As of February, 1969, Cash maintained his home at Henderson, Tennessee.”
Johnny Cash died on September 12, 2003 at the age of 71. He was one of the best-selling music artists of all time. As for the California condors, their plight continues. The bird was added to the federal endangered species list in 1967, two years after the fire started by Cash. In 1987, the last 22 wild California condors were brought into captivity in a groundbreaking attempt to save the species from extinction. There are currently 343 California condors in the wild plus 217 in captivity, according to the Ventana Wildlife Society. This includes a population at the Sespe Condor Sanctuary within Los Padres National Forest, known as the “Home of the California Condor.”
Related stories:
These 16 Live Webcam Feeds Bring California’s Most Awesome Birds to Your Screen
A Comprehensive Guide to California’s 20 Remarkable National Forests
