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Posted by D Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Monday, May 17, 2010 at 01:48:58 :
In Reply to: Here is what I meant to post posted by Jerry in Idaho [64.139.238.43] on Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 20:13:42 :
There are various commemorations planned here for the 1910 fire memorial. Next week we'll be using both Mine Tour trolleys to take a group of foresters up to what's being called the "Pulaski Trail", which is the West Fork Placer Creek trail that's been all fancied up so just about anyone can walk the 2 miles up to the Nicholson adit of the War Eagle mine, where Ed Pulaski led his fire crew to a barely-adequate refuge during the big fire. Ironically, as part of fancying it up, the Forest Circus has put a steel gate across the adit so that now someone tries to take refuge there during a forest fire, they'll just have to stay outside the gate and die.
Anyway, the foresters' trip is one of the first things, but there's a bunch of other stuff going on. A couple people have written new books about the fire, but they don't really add much to the old books (the one by Holt is my favorite) since all the people who remembered the fire are dead now and there isn't any new information to put in any new book.
One interesting thing is that a group of people is rehabilitating the fire-fighter's section in the Ninemile Cemetery (there is another bunch of 1910 fire victims buried in St Maries) and they're going to build a memorial that was designed by Ed Pulaski but was never built. Someone turned up the original plans for it, so after 100 years it's finally going to be built. That's kind of neat.
Of course people are also saying with the lack of snow last winter, maybe we'll have a repeat of the 1910 fire season for real this summer. What's interesting is that the winter of 1910 was one of the snowiest ever. In March, the "Wellington Slide", a big avalanche came down through old-growth timber and swept a Great Northern passenger train down into the gulch at Wellington, just west of Stevens Pass. But after that last big snow storm in early march, there wasn't another drop of rain to speak of anywhere in the northwest until late August, when an early snow fell and helped put out the big fire. People think we have "weird weather" these days but it was way weirder in 1910.