Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires. We Can’t., 1979

This series consists of posters promoting wildfire prevention, the bulk of which were produced for the Cooperative Forest Fire Prevention (CFFP) campaign.

Some of the early posters in this series use World War II resource conservation themes from an American point of view, and a few portray negative racial and ethnic stereotypes. Most of the CFFP posters produced after 1944 feature Smokey Bear and variations of his slogan, “Only you can prevent forest fires.” The collection also contains posters from the Smokey Bear Sports Program and several fire prevention posters from countries outside the United States.

The posters are grouped by topical categories (such as CFFP campaign, non-U.S., or Smokey Sports Program), then arranged chronologically by decade according to issue date, where dates are known or inferred. Most CFFP campaign posters are identified by an issue number formatted as follows: a two-digit year of issue, the campaign abbreviation (CFFP), and a sequential number. For example, 85-CFFP-2 represents item number 2 issued in the 1985 campaign.

These posters are the result of a creative process involving various steps. Series II of the collection contains many images used in producing posters and other items at different stages in their design and printing, such as original artwork, mechanicals, color separations, and proofs.