HISTORY ALONG THE GREAT AMERICAN RAIL-TRAIL
Remembering the 1910 Firefighters
Spanning nearly the entirety of Idaho’s panhandle, the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes (friendsofcdatrails.org) is a segment on the country-spanning Great American Rail-Trail®. It traverses 73 paved miles through scenic moun- tains, valleys and prairie, and crosses a broad lake on the 4,000-foot-long Chatcolet Bridge. As the trail ap- proaches the Montana border, it skirts the small town of Wallace (population around 800), of which nearly a third was lost in the Big Burn. Turn off the trail into town at the Historic Wallace trailhead to visit the Northern Pacific Depot Museum (open seasonally, npdepot.org) and the Wallace District Mining Museum. On the south side of town along the lightly trafficked Placer Creek Road is the trailhead for the Pulaski Tunnel Trail, a 4-mile out-and-back hike that takes visitors along the route that Ed Pulaski’s crew followed in their flight from the 1910 fire (see p. 16) and ends overlooking the charred timbers supporting the adit where they sought shelter. Both the route and tunnel are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and fittingly, some interpretive signage along the route is flanked by Pulaski firefighting tools. Hikers, please note that the trip is considered somewhat arduous and should take two to three hours to complete the round trip. > For more great stories on the history of the Great American Rail-Trail, go to traillink.com/historic-places or rtc.li/history-happened-here .
PHOTOS: Opposite page: (Top) Image of p. 1 of The Daily Missoulian from Aug. 22, 1910 | Newspapers.com archive; (bottom left) Ed Pulaski (right) and a colleague at the mine tunnel where he and 45 men took refuge | Archival Idaho Photograph Collection, University of Idaho Library Digital Collections; (bottom right) Fire crews fight the Big Burn on the hill opposite Sixth Street in Wallace, Idaho. | Courtesy University of Idaho Library Digital Collections, Barnard-Stockbridge Photograph Collection. This page: Idaho’s Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes | Lisa James. which a firefighter could chop trees and dig firebreaks with the same tool, he refined, promoted and popularized the design. His original prototype is on display at the Wallace District Mining Museum [see sidebar], and today, the Pulaski is symbolic of wildfire fighting efforts. to overcome injuries sustained in the adit. Despite that, his name lives on in the iconic tool generally called a Pulaski. While the man himself did not invent the combination of axe and adze with
heads; he doused the supporting braces with hatfuls of water from a minuscule stream seeping through the mine and used horse blankets to smother any flames. Today, the deeply charred remains of the thick adit timbers can still be seen. Even underground, the force of the fire was extreme; the group’s two horses died from smoke in- halation, and Pulaski himself was burned and suffered eye and lung damage from the heat and smoke. One of the men announced his in- tention to brave the flames outside the mine. “There in a murky sil- houette against the flames,” wrote Pyne, “he met Big Ed Pulaski, pistol in hand, who said he would shoot the first man who tried to leave.” One firefighter had fallen behind in the mad flight to the mine, and five more died in the adit itself, but all told, Pulaski is credited with saving the lives of 39 men. While hailed as a hero, Pulaski himself rejected the appellation, didn’t seek publicity, and committed his recollection of the events to paper only 13 years after the fact—and this, explained Pyne, was only at his wife’s insistence to help pay for eye surgery he received
A writer and a rider, Colorado native Scott Stark enjoys combining the two as he explores trails across the country. View more of his work on stark-made.com.
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