EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. — The brush clearing underway along El Dorado Hills Boulevard Monday is about more than making the roadside look better.
A Growlersburg Conservation Camp crew was working alongside the El Dorado County Department of Transportation, cutting back vegetation and reducing fuels along the busy corridor as part of a longstanding partnership.
The objective is straightforward: improve visibility, keep vegetation from encroaching on roadways, reduce hazardous fuels and help prepare El Dorado County communities for wildfire.
But the work in El Dorado Hills represents only one piece of a much larger operation.
Five crews working across the county
Growlersburg Conservation Camp in Georgetown provides up to five hand crews for projects throughout El Dorado County. CAL FIRE’s strategic planning documents identify the camp as an important resource for pre-fire treatment programs as well as initial-attack firefighting.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says Growlersburg is jointly operated with CAL FIRE and that its incarcerated hand crews perform community service and conservation projects year-round. Those assignments include shaded fuel breaks, vegetation management, grounds maintenance and other projects for local, state and federal agencies.
That means the sound of chainsaws and the sight of crews clearing brush along a county road can be part of a much broader wildfire-prevention strategy.
On Monday, the countywide deployment included a crew assisting El Dorado County Roads in El Dorado Hills, another working with the City of Placerville, a crew conducting defensible-space work in Garden Valley and another assisting the U.S. Forest Service with preparations for upcoming vegetation-management work.
The strategic placement allows crews to work where vegetation-management needs are greatest rather than concentrating the entire workforce in one location.
Wildfire preparation begins long before the smoke
For residents accustomed to seeing fire crews primarily when flames are already moving through the foothills, the distinction is important.
Wildfire preparedness increasingly depends on work completed before an ignition occurs.
El Dorado County’s wildfire planning efforts emphasize fuels reduction, defensible space and maintaining safe routes for emergency access and evacuation. The county’s hazard mitigation planning also identifies vegetation management as a major component of reducing wildfire risk following the 2021 Caldor Fire.
The county has also developed a public mapping tool showing fire-prevention and vegetation-treatment projects, along with wildfire history, fire resources and other information.
In El Dorado Hills, where development meets grassland, oak woodland and brush, that preparation is particularly relevant. The El Dorado Hills Fire Department maintains its own vegetation-management and defensible-space programs and identifies fuel reduction as an important component of wildfire mitigation.
A workforce that can shift from brush to fire
The other advantage of the Growlersburg model is mobility.
When conditions change and a wildfire breaks out, crews already working throughout the county can become part of the emergency response.
That dual role is built into the mission of Growlersburg Conservation Camp. CDCR describes its primary mission as supporting local, state and federal agencies during emergencies, including fires and floods, while its crews continue conservation and community-service assignments throughout the year.
The numbers illustrate the scale of that contribution. CDCR reported that Growlersburg crews provided 123,807 emergency-response hours in 2025, the highest total among California’s conservation fire camps that year.
In other words, the same crews helping clear vegetation along an El Dorado County roadway today can be part of the county’s firefighting response when conditions demand it.
A longtime El Dorado County resource
Growlersburg’s connection to El Dorado County is not new.
The conservation camp opened in 1967 near Georgetown. By 1980, its capacity had expanded enough to support five hand crews. Today, those crews continue to perform fire suppression, conservation and community-service assignments throughout the region.
El Dorado County recognized the camp’s longstanding public-service role in 2018, when the Board of Supervisors marked Growlersburg’s 50th anniversary of providing fire suppression and community-service work in the county and throughout California.
The mission remains particularly relevant in a county where steep terrain, dense vegetation, a growing wildland-urban interface and limited evacuation routes can complicate wildfire response.
As CAL FIRE’s Amador-El Dorado Unit has noted, the county contains extensive wildland-urban interface areas and a mix of brush, grass, oak woodland and timber fuels. The agency identifies vegetation-management projects and fuel reduction as key tools for reducing the potential spread of major fires and protecting surrounding communities.
The work most residents never see
For motorists passing through El Dorado Hills, Monday’s operation may simply look like another roadside maintenance project.
It is more than that.
Every cut branch, cleared shoulder and reduced fuel load represents a small piece of a much larger countywide effort — one designed to make roads more usable, improve visibility, limit the amount of vegetation available to a wildfire and give firefighters better conditions when an emergency occurs.
And tomorrow, another Growlersburg crew will be somewhere else in El Dorado County doing much the same thing.
That is the point of strategically placing five crews across the county: do the prevention work before the fire starts, and keep the firefighting resource close when the fire does.
Sources: CAL FIRE Amador-El Dorado Unit strategic fire planning documents; California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Growlersburg Conservation Camp #33; El Dorado County wildfire-preparedness and hazard-mitigation documents; El Dorado Hills Fire Department.
