Golden, IL
Golden, IL's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Golden at the 1st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 433 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Golden at the 1st percentile, close to its 1st-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS classifies 96.5% of Golden's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 3.5% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Golden against the rest of the country
Golden scores 1st nationally and 11th within Illinois — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Golden ranks 31,131 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 18,578 by building count (1 is largest). Within Illinois alone, it ranks 1,295 of 1,445 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Illinois on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Golden's low rating (1st percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Golden's 96.5% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Golden's 1st-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Golden, see the exposure-zones guide.