Wallace Idaho, Where the Burn Turned Big
Although the residents of Wallace, Idaho, (about 70 miles east of Spokane, WA) had been seeing and smelling smoke all summer, there was nothing in the Spokane Daily Chronicle of August 17, 1910, that directly mentioned any fire danger.
There was a photograph at the bottom of the front page of Army troops with their rifles and equipment stacked teepee-like and at the ready. The caption read National Guards, Now Camping at American Lake (WA), Have Been Reorganized—New Commanders Appointed. Although there was no mention of their purpose, the troops would become significant in fighting the forest fires that at the moment seemed greater than normal in number but were generally perceived not to be an imminent threat.
The next day, the Spokane paper carried a short page one article under the headline Will Fight Fires: Spokane Troops Ordered to Be in Readiness to Leave for Washington Forest.
Just a few days later, the entire front page of the Spokane Daily Chronicle of August 22nd was filled with stories about the now rapidly spreading fires. Seventy people were already dead. According to one story, the fire was spreading at one mile per hour. Firefighters were back burning to try to contain the fire.
Word of the Devastating Fires Reaches the East Coast
The story had now gone national. The New York Times ran a short article on its front page on 21 August.
At Wallace and Murray, Idaho, fires on Placer Creek, which were believed to be subdued, have broken out with renewed fury, and fears are expressed for the safety of the towns. Burning branches of trees fell on Wallace today, driven thither from the forest fire, which is only two miles distant. Under the direction of forestry officials, soldiers and laborers have begun back firing between Wallace and the fire.
In Oregon the most serious situation is in that part of the Cascades forest reserve that lies between Klamath Falls and Medford. Two great fires are raging in this district, one in the vicinity of Mount McLaughlin (Mount Pitt) and the other on Ashland Creek. The latter is treatening the water supply and the electric plant of Ashland.
The forest service and private timber interests have about 500 men combating the fires, and 250 regular soldiers are on the way from American Lake, Washington.
Forest fires were now raging from Montana through Idaho, Wasington state, and Oregon to Northern California. Towns were being cut off, surrounded by fire. Few people had cars. The main means of escape was the railroads, and trains were having difficulty getting through to some towns. Where tracks were still open, special trains were run to evacuate townspeople.
The subheads of the story summarize the gist nicely:
Hundreds Are Homeless
Burying Dead Wherever Found
Many Towns Are Abandoned
Men Flee to Creek for Safety
Women Mourn Missing Men
Refugees Tell of Disaster
Bad Fire in Gallatin Forest (about 20 miles north of Yellowstone National Park)
Volunteers Slow to Respond
Thinks Incendiary Is at Work
Wreck Reported Due to Fire
The latter subhead referred to the derailment of the Great Northern Oriental Limited (luxury train between Chicago and Seattle):
Helena, Mont. Aug. 21.—Reports here are to the effect that the Great Northern Oriental Limited left the track near Inverness (MT) this afternoon and that the entire train was derailed, although no one was killed. It is believed that the rails spread because of the intense heat from the forest fires. This is the second wreck on the Oriental Limited this season, the first being due to a washout of rock at the time of the spring freshets.
With telegraph lines cut off by the fires, information was hard to come by and much of the early information that got out proved to be incorrect, to be corrected later after the fact. Many people reported missing were later found alive. More from the story:
Missoula, Mont., Aug 21.—[Special]—Forty-six persons are known to have perished, sixty-eight are injured, eighteen of them probably permanently blinded, and property valued at millions of dollars is destroyed, ($1,000,000 in 1913 equals $30,877,878.79 today) all as a result of forest fires which are raging in a belt of territory 10,000 square miles in extent in northern Idaho and western Montana. Only heavy rains can avert more damage and loss of life….
At War Eagle tunnel, three miles from Wallace, six dead were found and two were badly burned.
Five of the dead in the tunnel had sought refuge. They lay with their faces down in the water, covered with wet rags and blankets and had died partly from the flames and partly from suffocation. The injured were relieved by temporary dressings and were taken to the nearest hospitals….
It is impossible to learn the names of the dead, most of whom came in from Spokane and other points at the call of the forestry service. The bodies are being buried wherever they are found. Days and weeks may elapse before anything like a complete estimate of the fatalities is available.
Town after town was abandoned, and “possibly a dozen towns have been wiped out.” The value of the “standing timber in the path of the flames will be almost incalculable.”
The fate of the 180 men missing in the St. Coe country (apparently Mr. Adams, WA) can only be conjectured. When the fire approached the forest rangers’ camp there were 200 men asleep. Two of the rangers took a horse, which they rode to death before they reached another camp and organized a rescue party.
(This is one of several references to riding a horse to death in the various articles I’ve read about the fires. If anyone knows what it takes to ride a horse to death, please comment.)
The rescuers got as far as Bird Creek (Bird Lake, now), where they found eighteen of the men in the water with blazing embers falling all about them. These men were rescued but there was no trace of the other 180. As they are all experienced in fighting forest fires. It is hoped they may have found another way to a place of safety and may even now be opposing the onward arch of the flames from another point of vantage. (Apparently, that turned out to be the case.)
The condition of the refugees in Missoula is pitiable in the extreme. Many of them have almost no clothing, having been aroused from their homes along the lines of the railroads while the special trains tarried only long enough for them to make a hurried run and climb into the coaches.
One woman, who left her home clad only in a night dress, with a blanket wrapped about her shoulders, gave birth to a child just as the box car in which she and several other women were riding reached the railroad yards. Mother and child were rushed to a hospital in an improvised ambulance and both may live.
According to many refugees from the fires who arrived in Missoula, one of the most frightening aspects of the conflagration was how rapidly the flames spread. Many went to bed confident that the fires were far enough away and headed away from their cabins only to be awakened to find the fire was “in their home clearings.”
The fortunate ones who escaped to Missoula feared that many others were not so lucky. “Experienced woodmen…say the situation is the worst they have ever seen.”
A dense pall of smoke hangs over almost the entire state of Montana. At 5 o’clock tonight in Missoula it was as dark as it ordinarily is at midnight, the dense smoke having a lurid hue which had all the semblance of the glow of flame, but which probably was due to the sun.
Aftermath (From the United States Forest Service)
For two terrifying days and night's - August 20 and 21, 1910 - the fire raged across three million acres of virgin timberland in northern Idaho and western Montana.
Eighty-six people died in the Big Blowup, most were fire fighters on the front lines of the fire.
The Great Fire of 1910 burned three million acres and killed enough timber to fill a freight train 2,400 miles long. Merchantable timber destroyed was estimated to be eight billion board feet, or enough wood to build 800,000 houses. 20 million acres were burned across the entire Northwest.
Most of what was destroyed fell to hurricane-force winds that turned the fire into a blowtorch.
Fireballs leaped canyons a half-mile wide in one fluid motion. Entire mountainsides ignited in an instant.
By noon on the twenty-first, daylight was dark as far north as Saskatoon, Canada, as far south as Denver, and as far east as Watertown, New York.
There is no complete record of how much dead timber was salvaged. The best estimate is about 300 million board feet, less than 10 percent of what was killed. It took years to clear away dead timber that clogged trails.
It was estimated that more than 100 fires were started by coal-powered locomotives.
The Great Fire of 1910 affected forest fire fighting policy of the nation and influenced forest management to this very day.
My intent is to give a sense of what contemperaneous accounts of the great fires of 1910 were saying. There were many inaccuracies and contradictions in newspaper stories of the time. That is to be expected at a time when electrification, automobiles, and telephones were still not common, especially in rural areas. The destruction of telegraph lines by the fire made accurate communication even more difficult.
For more complete accounts of the disaster with the benefit of hindsight, here are some sources:
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, by Timothy Egan
The Big Burn, PBS American Experience, Aired September 7, 2022
America’s Worst Wildfire: The Big Burn of 1910, Chuck Collins, HISTORYNET
The Great Fire of 1910, Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forestry Service