Approximately 1400 hours the CCC crew arrived at Rock Creek. They drove to the end of the two-track road leading into the creek. At this point, the Crew Foreman, Wilbur Timmons, divided the 23 person crew into two squads. He would take his squad and approach the fire along the ridge to the north of the fire. He placed Earnest Tippin in charge of the second squad. Tippin's group was directed to approach from the west to the bottom of the fire. Foreman Timmons believed the bottom of the fire would be safer for the less experienced squad boss Tippin.

The memorial site was established by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the U.S. Forest Service in honor of the crewmembers of Company 1212 that were entrapped on the 1939 Rock Creek Fire. This is a good location to begin the staff ride, as it is easy to find, has good parking capacity, and provides an excellent perspective of the site from the monument.

This is identified in the Investigation Report Figure 1 as Point 10 and in Figure 2 as Point 4. The Missionary Spot Fire was originally detected at about 2015 by Forest Supervisor Thomas from Powder House Turn. The spot is believed to have originated sometime around 2005 when "a local wind of considerable turbulence developed for a brief period." Other spots were detected and extinguished just below Alder Springs Road and near the old car around this time.

This point is located at the head of the Powder House drainage, along Alder Springs Road and offers personnel involved in the incident their best vantage of the overall fire and the Powder House drainage. It logically became the incident command post (ICP) for the incident. It is from this point that 21 Missionary crewmembers and three Forest Service overhead, in three different groups, were dispatched to attack and control the Missionary Spot Fire.

After failing to control the fire through direct attack near Oleta Point, Fire Boss Ewing made a new plan in consultation with Lafferty. The plan consisted of: