My wife and I have been informed that our kids’ school district is starting remotely in September, and it will run that way through at least November. The kids aren’t thrilled about it, but I must say I’m relieved. We’re going to try to make it so they both can do remote as palatably as possible, with a couple of friends in a safe way, like in the backyard with a Wi-Fi extender. If you must stare at a screen, better to do it with a little company.
Enter the gazebo.
That’s right, a frickin’ gazebo is going into our backyard on August 26. They’re bringing it in one piece and will just thunk it down on the ground. And it’s on me to prepare that ground. It’s got to be level, and we’re not quite there yet. I’m digging out an 11-by-11-foot area, from a few inches to about a foot deep, and then I’ll fill the whole thing up with gravel.
I started a week or so ago, and I found to my great dismay that the ground is just loaded with little roots from ivy, bushes, and trees. A simple shovel kept getting stuck in the roots and was getting me absolutely nowhere. How was I going to get this done? I started looking online and was informed that the trick that would save me (and it has!) was going to be a Pulaski ax.
A what?
Well. That set me off to learning about the night of August 20, 1910, when more than 5,000 square miles — an area the size of Connecticut — in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho and Montana, and several towns that were in the way, burned to the ground in a matter of hours. This was the Great Fire of 1910, or “The Big Burn”. It was, and remains, the largest forest fire the U.S. has ever seen. The amount of timber that burned that night could have built 800,000 houses.
Officially, 86 people were killed by the fire, but it was certainly more than that. Some of the dead, when they were found, were at first mistaken for charred logs. Many of them were firefighters desperately trying to keep the fire from consuming Idaho towns like Wallace, Grand Forks, and Avery.
A group of 45 such men working for the fledgling U.S. Forest Service had headed into the hills the evening of August 20, 1910, under the supervision of 44-year-old ranger Ed Pulaski, to dig trenches, set backfires, whatever it took, to save the town of Wallace. A lightning-heavy storm on July 26 had started hundreds of small fires throughtout the Bitterroot region, and forest rangers had their hands full every day keeping them at bay, literally hopping straight from one to the next. The spring and summer of 1910 had seen no rain whatsoever, and by August, walking through the dry forest was like stepping over potato chips.
Pulaski knew this was going to be bad. His team would try to do its best, but there was a good chance their hometown of Wallace would burn to the ground. He matter-of-factly told his wife Emma that he might never see her and their adopted child Elsie again. He arranged with them to shelter themselves behind a berm of crushed silt next to the reservoir, because at least that wouldn’t burn.
As the afternoon of August 20 wore on, it became clear that the fires were all merging into one, thanks to the arrival of hurricane-force winds. In summer, in Northern Idaho? Indeed. This phenomenon is called a katabatic wind. A cold front and/or radiative losses at the tops of mountains cools the air up there, and a little push can send the denser air mass rumbling down the mountains like an avalanche:
The katabatic wind: the forces of gravity and air pressure gradient draw cool, dry air down from high pressure plains at altitude towards low pressure, funneling in river valleys and through passes. Wind speeds of over 100 knots have been recorded.
First, imagine a wildfire in the Bitterroot Mountains, where even without wind you are surrounded in a steep bowl of flame:
A wildfire on the East Fork of the Bitterroot River on the Sula Complex in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana, United States, August 6, 2000
And now combine that with a katabatic wind ripping down from the mountaintops:
It was so strong, Pulaski said, it “almost lifted men out of their saddles.” That combination up in the hills, with limited mobility, meant a fiery death for many of the U.S. Forest Service members that evening, and it should have meant the same thing for Ed Pulaski’s team. They were panicked and in fear for their lives, and rightfully so. There would certainly be no saving of Wallace. The men needed to focus on saving themselves.
Day had prematurely turned to night with all the smoke, and so it was very difficult to see anything but raging fire all around. Smoldering trees and flaming branches were randomly falling everywhere. The heat and smoke were so intense that you could barely breathe.
At first Pulaski thought they could make it down the slopes to Wallace, but it soon became evident that would be impossible. The fire was surrounding them completely. None of the men knew the area like Pulaski did, and fortunately he recalled that there was an abandoned mine shaft not too far from where they stood.
One older man on the team said he could no longer walk, so Pulaski gave him his horse and told him to make a run for it. There’s no evidence that man was killed, so he may well have made it out somehow.
Another man in the party was hit by a burning tree and knocked down. He caught fire and couldn’t get up, and the men knew they couldn’t save him. They had to move on or they’d suffer the same fate.
By the time Pulaski located the mine tunnel, flames were engulfing the path the men had just come up. He ordered everyone inside the tunnel and told them to get down, faces to the ground, because if they sat up, in time they’d suffocate.
One panicked man decided he’d had enough and tried to run out of the tunnel. Ed Pulaski reluctantly pulled out his revolver but forcefully declared he’d shoot anyone who tried to leave, because it meant certain death. The man came to his senses, and Pulaski put his gun away.
There was some water within the tunnel, and Pulaski used that to drape the entrance with some wet blankets. That worked for a while, but even those caught fire, so the oxygen started to get sucked out the opening again. He burned his hands replacing them with the last wet blankets he could find, and he had to douse himself over the head a couple of times by filling up his hat with mine water because his hair had caught fire. His face was burned and his eyes were irritated so badly he lost most of his ability to see. He’d inhaled a significant amount of smoke as well, and his breathing became labored.
Ed Pulaski fell unconscious, and most of the other men around him did as well. The fire continued to burn, but it did not enter the tunnel. After several hours, fresh air finally began to make its way in. Around 5 A.M., Pulaski woke to the sound of a man saying, "Come outside, boys. The boss is dead."
Pulaski’s throat was parched, but he managed a few words.
“Like hell he is.”
The men emerged from the tunnel, most crawling because their legs were still too weak to support them. Forty alive, but five dead, and two dead horses as well. The creek water was warm and full of ashes, so after all they’d been through, there wasn't any potable water. They’d have to stagger down to Wallace.
This is what the tunnel entrance looked like just after the fire:
The Pulaski Tunnel as it appeared in 1910, just after the Big Burn
It was through that landscape that the men would have to make their way down to Wallace, their shoes burned through, breathing only haltingly, having to avoid still-smoldering areas that might not be stable to step on. But somehow they made it down. They were met by one rescue party, itself barely in any condition to help. Near Wallace, a group of women scouting for survivors offered them coffee and whiskey, but they just needed water.
Aftermath of the Big Burn, 1910
Ed Pulaski and his men were taken to the hospital, which fortunately was in the half of Wallace that did not burn to the ground. As soon as his wounds were dressed, he convinced the staff to let him return for a few hours to his house, which to his great relief had not burned. There he found Emma and Elsie, who had sheltered just as Pulaski told them, and survived.
Wallace, Idaho burns on the night of August 20, 1910
Wallace, Idaho, the morning after the Great Fire of 1910
Emma and Elsie Pulaski
Pulaski was never compensated by the U.S. Government for his services, and neither were the other members of his team. Despite not being able to cover his own medical expenses, he helped pay the bills of a firefighter named Patrick Sullivan who was in worse shape than he was. Sullivan’s hands were so badly burned he couldn’t use them anymore, and he had a terrible, painful cough that wouldn’t go away. But there was no money for his medical care, and Patrick Sullivan died on Christmas Eve, not even counted among the official casualties of the Big Burn.
Two U.S. Forest Service firefighters after the Great Fire of 1910
Ed Pulaski dragged himself back to work by 1911 because he still had to support his family. His breathing and his vision weren’t as good anymore, but he slowly regained his abilities.
He still wanted to find ways to make things easier for firefighters, and to help them quickly dig trenches through heavily rooted ground and also chop down trees that might enable a fire to spread, he developed an axe-adze combination now known as the Pulaski ax. His original is on display at the Wallace District Mining Museum:
The first Pulaski ax. This one has an inscription on the wooden handle near the blade: “E.P.”
Although Ed Pulaski couldn’t successfully convince the government to remunerate him or his men for their medical expenses, he eventually did get them to set aside a measly $500 to commemorate the five firefighters who died. But they didn’t even use his design. That finally happened one hundred years after the fire, in 2010:
This monument honoring the fatalities on Ranger Ed Pulaski's fire crew was dedicated in Nine Mile Cemetery in Wallace, Idaho on August 20, 2010.
The plaque reads:
The granite headstone before you is the original design that Ranger Ed Pulaski created in 1921 after the U.S. Congress obligated money to erect memorials for the firefighters that perished in the Great Fire of 1910. Ranger Pulaski’s supervisors thought that his design was too small, and it never became a reality. In August of 2010, with contributions donated by Coeur D’Alene River Ranger District employees, the headstone he envisioned was set in place here at the site of the men who died under the supervision of Ranger Pulaski on August 21, 1910.
Ed Pulaski died on February 2, 1931, not long after he’d been in a serious car accident. It may have been the result, at least in part, of his poor eyesight. He is buried at Forest Cemetery in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and on his rather humble tombstone is reflected the fact that he was given an honorary title by the Polish government:
“Count Edward C. Pulaski, Feb. 2, 1931”
The site of the tunnel that Pulaski led his men into had fallen into obscurity after the fire, but it was located again by a retired U.S. Forest Service member named Carl Ritchie, in 1979. When he found it, locals who knew what Pulaski had done raised $300,000 to restore the tunnel entrance and provide a trail that visitors can use to retrace the steps of Pulaski and his men, and imagine what the night of August 20, 1910 must have been like. In 1984, the tunnel and the trail were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Heavy underbrush frames the entrance to the famous Pulaski Tunnel in July 2010
Ed Pulaski, for all his heroism, wasn’t treated right by our government, and neither were any of the other firefighters caught in the Bitterroot Mountains that night, doing their best to save some small towns and the people who lived there.
But all these years later, he’s recognized as the hero he was, and he’ll be part of American folklore forever.
Tomorrow, after working from home in the basement, I’ll go back into the garage and grab my Pulaski ax.
Another school year is almost here, and I’ve got some ground to clear.
