York Fire (2023): Why the York Fire cannot have started on August 1

Mojave National Preserve issued an incident update on July 30. The state archive gives August 1 in its start field. The earlier contemporaneous bulletin is enough to show that fire activity predated the state entry.

Incident record

State archive date1 August 2023
Location in the incident recordNew York Mountains, San Bernardino County, and Clark County
County listingSan Bernardino
Reported footprint93,078 acres
Recorded containment100%
Containment entry19 August 2023

Why the York Fire cannot have started on August 1

This is a source conflict with a practical fix: use the park chronology to establish that the fire was already under way in July, and label August 1 as the state listing date. The incident location spans California and Nevada; a single California county row cannot allocate the full footprint by state.

Sources