About 150 acres had burned by Wednesday near the hamlet of Summerhaven, on Mount Lemmon outside Tucson, said fire information officer Marylee Peterson. The fire started Tuesday about two to three miles from Summerhaven.
By afternoon, flames had drawn to within a mile or less of the community, said Forest Service spokesman Randall Smith. Still, the fire was not advancing as quickly as it had earlier.
``We have had some gusty winds, but nothing extremely strong, and we are beginning to make progress on the fire,'' Smith said.
All residences and businesses in Summerhaven were evacuated late Tuesday. About 20 fire trucks were posted in the southern Arizona community Wednesday, Peterson said.
Elsewhere, a blaze in the Sierra Nevada near Carson City, Nev., had been contained after burning 1,200 acres and closing a highway to Lake Tahoe.
The nation's two largest wildfires had blackened a total of nearly 70,000 acres in southwestern New Mexico, but they were low-intensity blazes being managed for the benefit of the forest, officials said.
``They're good fires,'' Gila National Forest spokeswoman Loretta Ray said Tuesday in Silver City, N.M. ``It's been a good opportunity to allow fire to resume its role in the ecosystem.''
And in central Arizona, a prescribed burn that jumped fire lines had burned some 1,500 acres, forcing the evacuation of about 15 homes in the rural community of Cherry.
Although Summerhaven is home to about 100 year-round residents, the population swells during weekends and summers. There are more than 700 homes and cabins on the flanks of 9,157-foot Mount Lemmon.
Peterson said she didn't know how many people had been evacuated.
Last year, a fire that burned more than 30,000 acres came within several hundred feet of Summerhaven, forcing residents to evacuate for two weeks.
