DENVER -- Terry Lynn Barton has been released from prison after serving a six-year term for starting the largest recorded wildfire in Colorado history.

Federal prison officials in Fort Worth, Texas, said Barton was released Monday morning. Family members said she will be serving her probation in Colorado. She faces 15 years of state probation and four years of federal probation.

Barton, 44, pleaded guilty to arson charges stemming from the 2002 Hayman Fire, which blackened 138,000 acres, destroyed 133 homes and forced more than 8,000 people to evacuate.

She was a fire spotter for the U.S. Forest Service at the time and originally claimed she had found an illegal campfire near Lake George, Colo., and tried to extinguish it. She later admitted setting the fire by burning a letter from her estranged husband in the designated fire pit.

A total fire ban was in force at the time and Barton was supposed to be looking for illegal campfires. She was fired following her arrest.

The fire, which started on June 8, quickly spread to nearby trees and grew rapidly, fueled by high winds and bone-dry conditions. The next day, it raced 17 miles in one day, making a beeline toward the southwestern Denver suburbs.

About 42 percent of the burned acreage was on National Forest land. The fire was fully contained almost a month after it started.

Barton has been ordered to pay $42.2 million in state and federal restitution toward the costs of fighting the fire. Her attorney did not immediately return a call.

The 2002 fire season was one of the worst in the past 50 years, according to The Wilderness Society. By the end of the year, nearly 7.2 million acres in the United States were consumed in fires, costing $1 billion to fight.