It's actually been the past hundred. But involves a lot of firefighters dying, a huge fire, and then a policy where every fire was suppressed. This leads to fuel build up. See it's hard to catch big chunks of green wood on fire if there isn't intermediate kindling. In the 90's we realized every forest has a fire cycle and most places started doing more control burns. Except Cali, because they see smoke, and equate it with pollution. So they didn't. It's kind of funny because Cali is so rich because they have so many ports. But, guess what buttercup, cargo ships are dirty bitches. So it goes. Cali being like "i curr about the enviro bro. my dad owns a prius dealership. no fires, man. but yeah, that cruse ship, some of the biggest emitters of co2, well that makes me rich so I turn a blind eye to that."