Category: History

1910 Fire in Mineral County

The year of 1910 started out much like many current years have -dry.
Add to that a wind that sucked the dew from the blades of grass, drained creeks and shriveled pine needles, and you have all the necessary elements for fire.
Seventy-five years ago-the winter and spring of 1909-1910 – most of the east-bound moisture that came from the Pacific, coast settled to the Cascades in the form of snow.’ Little of that moisture came as far as northern Idaho and western Montana.

And the inches of rain that annually deluged the country in June shrunk to brief sprinkles The fledgling U.S. Forest Service had hoped for better as it assigned one man from its thin ranks to each oversee thousands of acres of forest land in the inland Northwest.

As the summer progressed fires in many locations began to spring to life-’often in the isolated, unroaded comers of the forests. Reports came in daily from the Clearwater, Cabinet, Lolo, Blackfoot, Kaniksu and Flathead forests of new fires that swelled to double and triple their size at a speed faster than a man could walk. Even Glacier National Park was ablaze in mid-May despite intensive efforts by fire fighters.

Nearly $6,000 a week was being spent on fires in the Coeur d’Alene forest in northern Idaho by July. And the railroads, lumber and mining industries sent their men to supplement the hired forces.

All backfiring, trenching and other schemes failed against the determined strength of Mother Nature. A powerful, raging wind blew me embers and smokes into a raging inferno near Elk City, Idaho in the afternoon of August 20. Before it was spent, it drove thousands from their homes, decimated Wallace, Idaho as well as burgs and camps on both sides of the Bitterroot Mountains, destroyed as much as $13.5 million in property and approximately 1,280,000 acres of timber and killed 85 people.
There are several books available that deal with the entire in this paper. Here we have tried to give a sampling of the effects that were felt within the boundaries of what is now Mineral County as reported by the Missoulian during and after the “big blowup.”

THE CALM BEFORE…

The Friday, August 19, 1910 Missoulian chastised its Missoula readers that they did not “realize the advantages of the Bitterroot banana belt,” citing the pleasantly cool temperatures and no wind experienced in the area for the past few days.
“More or less cloudy weather (is expected), throughout this sector,” it forecast, ‘but no rain or material changes in temperatures in this locality during the next 24 hours is indicated.”

Folks found the lack of rain not just an inconvenience but a real concern. Although the “fire situation in the Coeur d’Alenes looks better than (it has) for weeks,” the paper noted, men were still near Spokane, Avery, Trout Creek and Wallace, to name a few, trying to beat the flames into submission.
New fires were springing up, too. Twenty men were enroute to the norm fork of the Blackfoot. And a camper reported that a fire on the Clearwater forest reserve in Idaho was now 10 miles wide and 30 miles long and spreading. A ranger headed for the Montana state line with 200 men to backfire the flames and prevent it crossing into the west side of the Bitterroots.

Although 400 pack horses and 2,000 men were in the Coeur d’Alenes by that Friday, according to the estimates of Associate District One Forester F.A. Silcox of Missoula; the agency figured the cost of fighting the fires would he made up from the later sales from protected stands of prime timber.
But Silcox admitted the task was overwhelming. When asked by the paper, when he and his crews expected to have the fires threatening western Montana snuffed out, he replied:
“It is absolutely impossible to put out such fires as are raging in the mountains now without the aid of rain. The entire northwest is as dry as tinder and the draft from the fires carries embers and burning branches ‘miles away into the woods.”

Silcox also noted that, “a new fire broke out at Haugan… which is pretty serious. The fire has been raging for several days on Big Creek, but not until yesterday did it assume ‘ dangerous, proportions.”

The forester had already telegraphed Fort Harrison in Helena for a company of soldiers to patrol the Borax section of the railroad east of Taft. But Silcox received word from the fort that ‘”no troops could be spared…”

As the day progressed the Big Creek fire grew according to a report by Forest Supervisor Elers Koch who had been on the scene. He described the fire’s approach: “The fire came over the mountain from the Coeur d’Alenes and so heavy was the smoke along the creek there that the blaze had a good start before we were aware that it had entered our forest at all.” But it would be another day before it threatened DeBorgia itself.

Meanwhile at Wallace creative solutions were offered up to bring an end to the drought. Prank Brooks, a balloonist, ascended into the smoke-choked sky with a load of dynamite which he proposed to set off at 5,000 feet. The theory was that the ensuing explosion, would act as lighting and thunder which would in turn bring on the rains.

Brooks reached only about 1,600 feet before he abandoned his task because the smoke from area fires was so heavy and winds so adverse he could rise no higher.
On the afternoon of Saturday, August 20 the worst fears of residents of the inland Northwest were realized. A hurricane of wind and flames roared across the land, the mountains and the little tinder-dry villages forcing a mass exodus from the area. Many rode, ran and walked to Missoula which became the refugee headquarters.
On a bulletin board next to the Missoulian newspaper offices an update of the holocaust was posted ..after every phone call from the ravaged zone. That information also went directly into the daily paper from which is drawn the first published reports of the inferno. The banner headline of the paper’s front page on Sunday, August 21 blared: FOREST FIRES IN MERCILESS SWEEP DESTROY TOWNS IN COEUR D’ALENES.

FRIGHTENED PEOPLE FLOCK FROM TAFT

Telephone messages from Taft at two o’clock this morning stated that the forest fires had crept down upon the town and that the Northern Pacific was taking residents of the famous camp down to Saltese. Two trainloads had left by two o’clock, at which time the fire had become so serious that it was thought that further wire communication would be impossible… The fire was burning close to the tracks and it was feared that traffic might possibly be seriously delayed.
Street scene of Taft

As of three o’clock (a.m.), it continued: “Taft is entirely surrounded by fire which is within 100 yards of the nearest building and advancing rapidly… Wallace has fallen at last, a victim of the forest fires that have hedged it about with fire and smoke for the last week. “There will be 300 refugees from Wallace, Mullan and Taft in Missoula… at seven this morning. They are on a special train that left Saltese at 2:30 this morning. In the number are 30 patients from the Wallace hospitals. The sick people will be taken care of at the Sisters’ hospital; Missoula will do all she can for the relief of the others.”

In another story, the paper described a Northern Pacific train headed for the besieged area: “Six outfit cars and a regular road crew of 60 men with all the equipment in the nature of buckets, axes, water bags saws,.. needed in fighting fires tried to get to Wallace.” This rescue train was organized by Missoula Mayor Andrew Logan and Silcox along with the help of C.H. McLeod who “opened the Missoula Mercantile store (for) anything needed.”

DEATH AND DESTRUCTION STILL FOLLOW

In the wake of the fierce flames, details of the fire’s destruction was confused and incomplete. The paper reported that “Last night a report was received from DeBorgia… that Mullan has not been burned and was well out of danger. The word is supposed to have been brought direct from Mullan by a man named McKay who made the trip from DeBorgia to Mullan and returned on a railway speedcar, the round trip being a distance of 70 miles.”

In another story, the fate of the rescue train sent from Missoula • the day before was told: “(it) got as far as Saltese about noon when all connections were broken with that place. At nine last night a lineman fighting his way through .the blaze by keeping in the river from Saltese to DeBorgia, notified the’ company headquarters here that the special had attempted to go on from Saltese, failed to get through and was returned to Saltese. All were safe at that hour but the danger of Saltese burning was increasing every minute. As a bridge burned between Saltese and DeBorgia, the relief train is tied up and will have to take chances of escaping the fire at Saltese.”

TWO TOWNS GONE

“The last word from the Northern Pacific was that DeBorgia and Henderson have both burned and that Buford (two miles east of St. Regis) will also down the Mullan Gulch, was in danger all evening and at 10 p.m. the Northern Pacific received a flash that the town was burning and all remaining residents were using its own engine. A stop was made at St Regis where the fire was… burning on the west side, and every effort was made to save the remainder of the burg.
“The last relief train from St Regis which left just as the town was catching fire will be held close ahead of the fire as long as possible to make sure of not missing any inhabitants of the towns being deserted. It will reach Missoula seven this morning.

“Persons arriving on the last special from St. Regis last night reported the destruction of Wiley’s big stock ranch, which was situated about three miles from Haugan’s spur. It is understood that his cattle consisting of several hundred head were also killed by the fire.

“At 1:30 this morning Mrs. Dowling, the Bell telephone operator at St. Regis, reported that the wind had gone down and the flames had been checked in their advance on the town. The feeling there this morning, however, is that both old and new St. Regis are doomed.”

THIRD TRAIN HERE FROM FIRE

“The third Northern Pacific train to reach this city from the burning districts toward Wallace arrived at 9:15 p.m. yesterday and had on board about 250 men, women and children. This was the regular Coeur d’Alene train sent out of Missoula at 1 p.m. yesterday but which only got as far as St.Regis. There it picked up families and men who had gotten down from Henderson, Buford and DeBorgia earlier in the day, and upon leaving St. Regis the town was practically deserted. Two coaches and a box car were well packed with the crowd, but there were comparatively few in distressing circumstances.”

RELIEF COMMITTEE FORMED

As the refugees started piling into Missoula, they were met at the trains by a relief committee made up of concerned Missoulians. All of the needy were taken to the Masonic Temple where they were fed, given coffee and assigned rooms with various families who had opened their doors to the homeless.

The chamber of commerce headed up the relief drive. Money began pouring into the coffers in response to a coupon published in the newspaper that said: “Please find __ dollars inclosed (sic) for the relief fund to be used in helping the suffers from the fire district”.

Fraternal orders were asked by chamber secretary A.J. Breitenstein to be on hand at the train station to help with the anticipated “300 refugees.” The Eagles, Sons of Herman, Salvation Army, the lumberman’s and railroad unions responded with food, clothing and money.

FIRST FUGITIVES

“Working with fire no farther west than Haugan… the (Milwaukee) handled admirably a situation which at every moment threatened to overcome all human endeavor,” the paper noted. “With the outbreak of the fire on the “loop” on the Idaho Side of the divide, last night a train was made up and all of the men who could be located then were hurried on “toward Missoula… at every town all down the road, men, women and children were picked up.

“The train, made up of box cars, reached Missoula at 8:30 after a run through fire and smoke… When the 200 dusty, smoky tired passengers on board fifed from their grimy cars under the glare of electric lights of the bridge they were indeed a sorry- looking sight “Great, strong men wearied by a long night of continual mental and physical strain, staggered up the steps to the bridge in pitiful weakness. Women, on whom the terror of a fire-filled night rested heavily, fairly crept along the sidewalk, their haggard faces and sunken eyes telling better than their few incoherent words of their fearful experience… .

BEATEN WARRIORS

“The trainload was made up principally of fire-fighters from along the “loop”… All of them carried rolls of blankets and some held in addition few belongings snatched as the rush for the train began. One man held in his arms a little Mack mongrel that whined pitifully with fright, and licked his mater’s hands as he was carried out to the street.

“All of the arrivals had stories of terrible experiences… they were dazed with fright and weary from overexertion and mumbled their stories with a peculiar monotone as though there were nothing to be surprised at or to wonder over…

ST. REGIS HEROINE

“…Mrs. J.J. Dowling gave constant attention to her (telephone) line and grasps of the fire situation…. she remained at her post from early morning and was the last to leave at night. Through her reports of fire which started between St. Regis and Henderson, the railway company was enabled to get word to their train crew in time to have them turn their train and get back to St. Regis before having been cut off from escape…”

SPLENDID BATTLE AT SALTESE

Missoulian correspondent W.G. Ferguson telephoned the newspaper with his eye witness report of the fire fighters in Saltese and other west end towns. He said: “After hours of the finest fire fighting I ever saw, Saltese is safe. Superintendent Fowler and his Northern Pacific men… did so well that there were no property losses in the little mountain town except the railway stockyards and six residences on the west end of the flat.”

The NP relief train started enroute to Mullan despite reports that there were “advancing walls of flame on the divide,” he said. “It was a doubtful situation, but after looking it over. Fowler decided to push on as far as he could…
“Up the steep mountain grade west of Saltese we went through an increasing volume of smoke and the air became laden with ashes and embers. At times the flames were so close as to seem dangerous, but the train pushed on and would have crossed the divide down to Mullan had it not been for a burned bridge… encountered at Borax. Further progress was impossible… so we dropped back down the mountain (where) we found Saltese in dire danger… The main canyon of the St. Regis (River) was aflame on both sides; it was stifling hot.. down Silver Creek to the south, and Packer Creek to the north, two other fires were coming at the rate of four miles an hour.

“Packer brigades were formed; men were sent out with shovels; the officers in command had their, men lined up with precision…

“In a few minutes the flames closed in; there was a roar as of a thousand cyclones… the crackling of flames… the dread glare… it was met by determined men… and the men won.”

Ferguson said they stayed the night on guard for new outbreaks and the next morning (August 23) he and seven men headed toward St. Regis on a handcar taking turns at pumping the handles. He described the 26-mile trip as being “like a moving picture show only more realistic… with the exception of Saltese and Henderson, nothing… escaped the flames between the summit of the divide and Buford.

“Everywhere there has been fire… Eyes are red and weeping, hands are blistered and clothing is burned full of holes by, the flying embers. In Taft, we are told, there are two buildings standing… In DeBorgia there are left standing the Schoolhouse, the ‘A.L.” saloon and a toolhouse. At Bryson everything is gone. Haugan is destroyed entirely. East Portal at the Milwaukee tunnel is all gone. All of the falsework on the Milwaukee’s big bridge over Dominion Creek on the west side is burned out.
“Two men remained in Taft when the people fled,” Ferguson continued, “They were to watch some property which had been buried. The fire came upon Taft when they were in their shack. Just as they rushed from the door, the rear of the building caught fire. The sheet of flame from the timber enveloped William McKay, who was behind his companion, and burned him from head to foot. His comrade returned, himself uninjured, and dragged McKay to safety. As soon as possible, medical aid was brought from Saltese and McKay’s awful burns were dressed. He was left in charge of a friend who got drunk and dropped a match upon McKay’s bandages which caught fire at once aggravating the previous Injuries so that the man died shortly after being brought to Saltese.

“The most serious loss of life yet reported here is at the Bullion Mine above Borax. There were 25 men employed there and when the fire came… the miners sought safety in the workings of the mine. Ten of them ventured out too soon. The heat and poisonous air overcame them at once and they (died).”

All saloons in St. Regis had been closed when word of the fire came to the town. But Taft, he reported, had been the scene of debauchery when “a gang of men… rolled whisky barrels from the saloons into the streets and had a carousal-which lasted until they fled down the mountain to Saltese.”

REFUGEES LISTED

The first list of refugees from the burned district appeared in the newspaper on August 23 along with the families they were staying with. The Wallace hospital patients were numbered among the many exiled from that city and many points to its east.

The residents from the Mineral County towns were:
Saltese-Mrs. E. Holmes and two children; Harry Stacy; Mr. and Mrs. A.H. Gray and son; W.L. Conover; Mr. and Mrs. T. Thayer and child; Mrs. Hill, wife of Saltese constable Ed Hill, and two children; Mrs. C.A. Mitland and son; Mrs. Otto Monsen and two children.

Haugan-Mrs. B.A. Haugan and three children; Mrs. Lloyd Davis and daughter.

Rivulet-Mrs. Ben Richardson.

Lookout-Ed Godfrey, Quartz-Mrs. G. Swanson and children; Mrs. J.C. Brickley; Mrs. Mary Brickley; Miss Edith Reinhardt.

DeBorgia-Mrs. Clara Stephens and four children; Mr. and Mrs. H.D.Stephens and three children; Mrs. E.K. Brennan; Lee Denny and sister; J.G. Nelson; Mrs. E.M. Page; Mrs.

William Harding; Mrs. John Lafaivre and daughter; H.A. Noble, wife and seven children.

St. Regis-Mrs. Smith and two children; Mrs. J.L. Teufal; Mrs. J.H. Quirk; Mrs. R.Goodwin; Mrs. E.M. Moore.

Iron Mountain-Mrs. G.A. Whitmarsh; Mrs. C.H. Barrett and two children; Mrs. Mont Wilson; Mrs. Curt Hudler and child; Mrs. Barrington and family.

UP CEDAR CREEK

The fire came over the mountains from Idaho and into Cedar Creek basin, the paper reported. It continued: “The fire is coming down Cedar gulch and is reinforced by a huge blaze from Oregon gulch. “The Cedar… fire has already destroyed the Amador mining property and the Kansas City Commercial company’s dredging plant with the exception of the dredge itself. Two charred bodies were found on the summit by fire, fighters returning to Iron Mountain from Oregon gulch. “If a heavy wind should arise in the direction of Iron Mountain, the fire from Cedar… may become… bad… It has reduced the Amador mine to a smoldering heap and consumed… the Big Flat Mining company’s plant in Oregon gulch…”

W.S. Clifford and Joe Shinnick had passed through the firey Cedar area and shared their experiences with the newspaper: “They were members of a pack outfit which was composed of eight men and 27 horses. They went through Oregon gulch on their way into Idaho and at the summit met a courier who warned them back.
“The fires came quickly. Before the party could get out, the horses had been lost in the fire and the two boys cut off from their comrades. They don’t know what became of the six men who were with them. Clifford and Shinnick got out through Oregon gulch into Cedar. There they stayed at the Kansas City Commercial company plant until they were routed out to help fight fire there.

“When the fire had passed, they came down the creek to Iron Mountain…”

In another article about the Cedar fire, the paper noted that “… the Amador and Kansas City companies used electric speeders (on the Amador track) as an avenue for escape… (others) .

We’re fleeing on foot…”

“Joe Gareau and William Lacombe escaped from death by a small margin and arrived in Iron Mountain yesterday with four horses remaining out of a total of 50 which they were packing into the Clearwater.”

By late Monday $3,316.80 had been contributed to the relief fund for the fugitives by the Missoula County government, the Missoula Merchantile, Northern Pacific, businesses, individuals, unions and fraternal organizations.

But the cash could not erase the memory of the fanatic flames as the refugees walked from the Masonic Temple and to other Missoula shelters searching for friends and families -and to learn the fate of their homes and towns up the track. The paper estimated that as many as 1,000 people were crowded into Missoula. Most were from the bumed out towns but there were also the inevitable flotsam -thieves, con men and so on -that alarmed the citizens. In response 100 special police officers were appointed by the mayor to protect the public during those critical days.

And before the day was over, the Missoulian posted another list of names of some of the refugees and where they were put up. It included St. Regis residents Mrs. James Legard; Mrs. Tine Teare and three children; Mrs. M. Weiber; Mrs. L.M. Payne; Mrs. Laugh; Mrs. V. Ridley and two children; and DeBorgia residents Mrs. C.D. Mills and three children and Mr. and Mrs. “George Demers and two children. Many of the husbands stayed behind to fight the flames .

PERSONAL STORIES

As they moved from place to place gathering names and information, the Missoulian reporters heard as many stories as there were people in the city from the fire district, such as the following:
“In the Shapard Bar… three grimy, smokey-faced men stood at the counter drowning their sorrow in beer. They have arrived from Haugan where they were burned out of business, house and home. Everything gone, they said, save the money they had in their pockets.

“There is nothing left to indicate that a town rested on the spot,” said one of the younger men. “O’Leary, Lamborg and Staves lost everything. Even the water tank went. Five bridges on the Milwaukee road are so damaged that new ones will have to be built, and miles of NP track is ruined.”

“I had a h–l of a fine little dog,” said George Woodard who ran a bar at Haugan, “but he is gone.” Woodard was crying.

“I told everybody the fire was coming and advised them to get their women and children out, but forgot my little dog, my truck and suitcase. Poor Chippie… he burned in my room where I locked him.”

“We had about 50 people in Haugan,” said the last man to leave town, “and everyone got out. The fire struck at two o’clock in the afternoon and swept through by five.”

Russell B. Jones, laborer on bridge work gang for the Milwaukee, “was unable to take the first train out from East Portal where he was working, and was penned in by the terrible fire… He took refuge in a “coyote” hole on the hillside and from that vantage point lay half-suffocated until the fire swept past.

“The wind was blowing a fearful gate,” he said. “The fire swept along the mountain with a roar… from where I lay I could see nothing but a solid wall of flame as much as 50 feet in height… embers and burning bits of wood… flew like driving snow… Near me 12 tons of dynamite which we had buried on the hill went off. The fire burned within ten feet where I lay and the glare and heat were almost too great to describe. Finally the fire passed and with some other men I made my way to the railroad and safety.”

IN WINDFALL

Trout Creek did not escape the flames, either, according to Frank D. Brown, a well-known pioneer who worked a claim in Windfall gulch, a tributary of Trout.
He rode into Missoula with a tale he feared no one’ would believe. He said: “I tell you the absolute truth, gentlemen, when I say that I have never in all my 45 years in Montana, seen anything to approach it.

“Last Saturday, in company of A.M. Stevens… I set out for the Cedar Creek region. From Quartz, a little railway station, we took the Windfall trail, which lies along the north fork (of the Clearwater) range, where most of the gulches head on a north and south line 30 miles long.

“The trail from Cedar intersects all these gulches… the only one known to be open is Windfall… The Cedar Creekfire had already cut off the Trout Creek trail…

“Windfall is about 11 miles from Quartz. When we crossed the Sunrise divide about 4 o’clock- Saturday afternoon I realized the fire might become serious for us…

“About five the wind began to blow and it was so strong that night that no one could sleep… the next morning Stevens told the miners that they had better get the women and children out of there. He added that the men could escape, when they got ready, but… I did not see any place that I could go if the situation became dangerous.

“The smoke grew thicker hour by hour-.. you couldn’t see 100 feet from you, yet we saw no flames. By Sunday night… the wind was blowing a gale… In the camp were two old men, two women and two children and a half dozen or more young fellows…

“About the middle of Monday afternoon we got a shock that almost made my hair stand on end. Charles Dickson, the hero of that region, sent a courier from Quartz to warn us of our danger. The Dicksons, Charlie and his father, Dave, put men on horses and hurried them into the forests to warn everybody.

“From Quartz I could see the glow of the fire. The smoke was dense, arid all around dark, but every now and then the sky would lighten. I will never forget the flight… Oh, those falling things! The air was full of them.”

DEBORGIA LOST

Fred Wence, the Northern Pacific section foreman at DeBorgia, also had a story to tell: “When I left DeBorgia, the flames were on the edge of town… I stayed until the last as we probably would have saved the town if it had not been for the wind…. I can’t describe the wind.

“The dust and cinders and sand went through the air like snow and I couldn’t keep my eyes open on the street. The wind didn’t come from any one direction, it blew first this way then that, whirling everything around and around. The fire jumped across the ditches almost before the men could get out of the way and came down toward town with a roar.”

Deborgia after 1910 fire

One of the men warned by Wence was Joe Mayo whose father ran a hotel in the lumbering town. Mayo recalled the fire in “Notes by Joseph A. Mayo,” which he wrote more than 50 years after the fire. He wrote:
“The morning of August 21 I was awakened by a loud banging at the front door of the Hotel at DeBorgia. I hurried to the door and Mr. Fred Wence… was very excited and said, ‘Joe, the whole country is afire.’ The ranger had telephoned to the section house to alert everybody in town and for someone to go to Bill Magee’s ranch and tell him to ride up Big Creek and warn a crew of 200 men who had a camp in there fighting fire as he thought (they) might get caught and not be able to get out safely.

“Dave Cromie had a bicycle that he loaned to John Gates to ride back and forth to Henderson where he worked. I took the bicycle and rode it to Magee’s place… and told him of (ranger Frank) Haun’s message.

“He disliked to ride in but finally said he would go if I would help him catch a horse. We went to the pasture but could see no horses on account of smoke but by walking around finally heard a horse moving and managed to catch one. We saddled one and he took off.”

Mayo said the camp was just stirring when Cromie rode in and warned them. The men went down to the Milwaukee tracks and caught the last train out of the fire zone.
“I went back to DeBoreia” Mayo continued, “and notified the women and children to get ready to move out as they were sending a train from St. Regis to pick them up. They packed their valuables and clothing in cases and got to the box cars. There was no agent, at the depot so I checked all their belongs with checks I found at the depot (which)… saved a lot of trouble when it arrived in Missoula…those whose baggage was not checked had a lot of trouble finding their things and some never did.

“Meantime, the men organized and got all the equipment they could ready to fight the fire as it approached from the west. There was a terrific lot of slashing and small timber just north of the town and they figured that if they could set a backfire and burn it off, it would help save the town. At about 5 p.m. the fire showed up on the hills and the backfire was set and was doing a nice job of buring. Later on the wind turned and on warning the men all ran for their lives.
“The second train from St. Regis arrived and started to toot its whistle continually and everybody went down to the train. We were informed that the train had to pull out at once as there was fire down the canyon and the track was burning so most of the men left…

“On arriving at St. Regis we took on a lot more people and the train was routed by Paradise over Evero hill as they were afraid to use the route from St.Regis to Missoula. In a few days we returned to DeBorgia (where) 68 buildings (were lost)… and four spared on account of freakest winds.”

The group of lumberjacks from Henderson who rode the Mann Lumber Company’s logging train to safety at St Regis through the inferno, came through with singed whiskers and eyebrows and scorched faces and hands, Mayo said.

CAMPERS FOUND

Mrs. Charles Derry, her mother, Marie Lalonde, and friend Mrs. Richard Daxon, all of Saltese, and some others were camping in the vicinity of the Bryan mine up Packer Creek when the fire blew up. An attempt was made to rescue teem but no word had been heard of them or their rescuer.

By Thursday, August 25, a fellow stranded at Saltese during the fire stopped at the paper office on his way home to Butte with the following news of the campers’ fate: “The party, with Mrs. Anno and son Dave Bobart, George Brusack and the Protestant Kid, spent two days and one night in the Bryan tunnel about five miles from Saltese…They had to beat the door down to get to the tunnel, and keep the fire out by the means of buckets. A water pipe delivered water at a convenient place for them. They took some supplies with them and the women made coffee while the men kept back the flames…”

Several Haugan men survived the fire’s onslaught by lying in the St. Regis River for 18 hours, the paper reported. The Tarbox Mining Company plant was completely destroyed at a loss of $6,000 and the Polleys Lumber Company near Saltese suffered some damage but all the men and horses survived.

West of St. Regis, it continued, three burned human bodies and 14 dead horses were.discovered. It speculated that the men were Italian laborers.

Four days after the blowup heavy rains began, according to reports the Northern Pacific received from its St. Regis operator. And to the mountains snow was falling onto the scorched earth and forests.

Within a week of the fire, the hundreds of evacuees returned to their homes or began rebuilding. Some sifted through the ashes for lost treasures while others dug up caches quickly stashed before leaving on the relief trains. Some were helped to resettle with cash from the total $5,188 relief fund raised in Missoula. Others took seed, tools and food with them as they headed home.

RECRIMINATIONS

Relieved as most were to have survived the fire, there were those who were bitter about the losses to their property.

Mrs. R.J. Wiley, who along with her husband operated the large cattle ranch near Haugan, wrote to the paper complaining that even though her husband had traveled to Savenac station and begged for someone to help him fight the flames on his ranch, no one came. She also said that Haun had told them to get out on the rescue train.
“There are no criticisms against any only the forestry department to refusing to allow settlers to backfire to save their property, and not sending help when it was needed… many of (the men) sent to to fight the fires were green… unfamiliar with the country and knew nothing of the topography and were unable to accomplish anything…” she added.

Wiley did note that those ranchers who stayed and fought for their property were partially or entirely successful. She hinted that the Forest Service was to blame for her ranch being destroyed because of Haun’s insistance that they leave for their own safety.

Taft saloonist Roy Nuras also registered a complaint with the paper. He said the report of a “debauch” taking place in the town as the flames approached was incorrect.

“After the crowd left,” he explained, “the six of us who stayed were busy. My saloon was wide open and nobody entered it. The barrel that was rolled to the street was a barrel of paint and not whiskey.”

And apparently the fight to save Saltese was not as noble in all aspects as first reported. “When the fight began,” wrote one Saltese man, “it was necessary for (Constable Ed) Hill to draw his gun and keep some of the unwilling ones (stranded there) to the fighting line.

“Not all of the old guard left when the Northern Pacific’s rescue train pulled out. Hill stood at the train with drawn revolver and would allow only those who had women and children to leave. In the ranks of the fire fighters were the old guard of the town- Dillingham, Conde, Wolfe, Brenton, Linn, Peterson and particularly Lajeunnesse. All were active and worked hard. The firefighting forces were strengthened by the reinforcements which came with the arrival of forestry men under Haun, Breen and Clifford.”

Constable Hill continued his vigilance throughout the fire. He discovered six men looting the buildings in the threatened town. After the fire had been extinguished, he hauled the looters before the local justice court where they were fined $50 each and sentenced to 60 days in jail.Among the structures saved in Saltese was “the baseball park wtth its grand stand, clubhouse and big fence,” the paper reported. “Not a board was scratched or scorched and when the fire was at its height Sunday night, the flag that floats above the grand stand flapped its folds in the stiff wind… around it surged the smoke and all about it showered the blazing brands..the flag was there when the fire had swept past…”

In all six people died in the flames within what became the borders of Mineral County during the 1910 fire. Haugan was completely destroyed as was most of DeBorgia. Saltese and Taft had some buildings at the edge of their towns burned, but Henderson and the Mann Lumber escaped completely unscathed as did St. Regis.

Blazing the Mullan Road

Although Lewis and Clark were the first explorers known to have recorded their travels through the geographic region known as Montana in 1805, it was John Mullan, first a lieutenant and later a captain in the U.S. Army, who left his stamp on the area. Nor was he alone in the task but helped and was helped by other notables in the region.

As the country pushed westward, a series of forts were established to protect the civilian population from potential and often real threat by the Native Americans whose land was at issue. Among the forts constructed was Fort Benton (in 1846), named in honor of Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, on the site of a trading post operated by the American Fur Company in the Dakota Territory. A second was Fort Walla Walla established in November 1856 in Washington Territory. It was between these two facilities that Mullan made his mark on the world.

It was because of Mullan’s thoroughness and exacting nature that Mineral County lies along a major east-to-west transportation artery. Mullan, an Army trained engineer, scratched out his road from Fort Walla Walla, Washington Territory to Fort Benton, Dakota Territory during the years of 1859-1862. It was intended first to be a military route used by the Army to quell potential Indian problems, then a path for pioneers to follow into the virgin region. Many sources question the road’s value in either of those cases although it was tested once for its military usefulness and used extensively during the hot and heady days of the Idaho and Montana gold rushes. There is even a note about a man that drove wild horses from Washington to Montana over the road during the Montana gold stampedes. There are records of camel trains plodding their way across the road delivering supplies from the west to the opening Territory of Montana.

The real value of the road came from the expedition notes made by the attendant cartographers, topographers, astronomers and other specialists during the 1853-1854 Pacific Railroad Surveys, and later on the Mullan road-building expedition. (Mullan was an active participant in both). That same data was in place when it came time to select a railroad route. Nor was it neglected when the Yellowstone Trail and Highway 10 roads were constructed to follow the same general lines as Mullan had.

On October 28, 1978 Mullan’s contribution to the settling of the inland northwest was recognized when the American Society of Civil Engineers dedicated the Mullan Road as a National Historic Engineering Landmark by placing a plaque commemorating the accomplishment at the top of the Fourth of July Pass in Idaho near the famed Mullan tree. In nominating the 624-mile road as a historic landmark, the ASCE noted that it “was the first major transportation facility in the Pacific Northwest whose location was selected on the basis of extensive exploratory engineering reconnaissance surveys. A sextant was used for determining astronomical positions, an odometer for measuring distances, a barometer for estimating altitudes and spirit levels for determining precise altitudes and profiles along various alternative routes.

“Mullan’s . . . crews successfully determined the first time the precise latitudes and departures at various key locations in the interior of the Pacific Northwest. Both the Lewis and Clark and Stevens expeditions had hoped to do this, but equipment failures and other problems had intervened.”

Considering both the method of location and the type of facility constructed, the Mullan Road was one of the first, if not the very first, ‘engineered’ road in the Pacific Northwest or perhaps even in the entire trans- Mississippi West. It was definitely the first engineered road in Montana.”

Blazing the Mullan Road

As early as 1852 a firm proposal was made to build an overland route to the Pacific Ocean to help settle the area with pioneers thus squeezing out any claims the French, English or Russians may have had on the disputed territories. But little detail was known about the country, despite Lewis and Clark’s work, so Isaac Ingalls Stevens, a West Point graduate who had been appointed the first governor of the Washington Territory, was ordered to survey a route from the Missouri River to the Columbia that would be suitable for the building of a railroad. Stevens assumed the task, but also kept in mind that the route should also be suitable for a wagon road.

In the spring of 1853, under Congressional authority, an expedition made up of engineers and explorers and led by Stevens was organized near St. Paul, Minnesota. They were to detail the geographical and topographical character of the country and among them was a small, dark-haired young man named John Mullan.

Mullan was just a year out of West Point and anxious to prove his mettle as a military trained engineer. He and the others in the assigned crew boarded boats which they took to Fort Benton at the headwaters of the Missouri River. Throughout the summer they mapped and charted their way west until in the late fall of 1853 they found themselves at Missoula and the most daunting of their work–to locate a passage through the Bitterroot Mountains–still ahead of them. Mullan wrote in his Report on the Construction of a Military Road from Fort Walla Walla to Fort Benton: “the lateness of the season, the difficulty of the county, the importance of our mission, the scarcity of our supplies, the meagerness of the information we then possessed and the necessity felt for a more detailed and thorough exploration of the Rocky Mountain -section … all conspired to influence Governor Stevens to leave in the mountains a small party for the winter of 1853, for further explorations …

Winter Camp

“To the command of this winter party I was assigned in October, 1853, and selecting the genial range of the Bitterroot a suitable location, and there erecting comfortable, though rude huts for my men, I made it a centre from which to explore the mountain region…”

Missoula pioneer Frank H. Woody mentioned these huts in his Reminiscences of the Early Days of Missoula County in which he wrote: “The only buildings then in the valley, were three or four small log houses built, I think, in the winter of 1853, by Lieutenant John Mullan at the large spring at the mouth of Willow Creek, and named Cantonment Stevens, and the buildings at Fort Owen.”

Throughout the winter Mullan and the men traveled around the valley and nearby ranges taking measurements, mapping and seeking information from the local folks, Indian and white. In ‘Captain John Mullan: His Life’ the authors tell that Mullan learned to depend heavily on one of the enlisted men, Gustavus Sohon, “an artist and gifted linguist,” who learned the Salish tongues of the Flatheads and Pend d’Oreilles and became the party’s interpreter. He helped gather information on the trails, mountain passes and other geographical features and his sketches are still among the earliest and best of the region.

With Sohon’s help, Mullan soon earned the tribes’ confidence. Prior to every foray, he gathered those Indians who wintered in the Bitterroot valley around him and explained to them where he was going to explore and why. He became well-known by the area residents who met him as he explored the Mission valley where the St. Ignatius Mission stands, the Bitterroot where the St. Mary’s Mission -and Fort Owen- were built.

Tenaciously Mullan and his men sought the best route across the mountains. As the weather improved in 1854, he pushed his way through the Lolo Pass and the Lochsa River area in search for a rail passage and pronounced: “I can arrive at but one conclusion–that the route is thoroughly and utterly impracticable for a railway. The country is one immense bed of rugged, difficult, pine-clad mountains, that can never be converted to any purpose for the use of men … In all my explorations I have never seen a more uninviting beds of mountains.” – With that; he scratched off Lolo Pass as a potential route.

Pass Chosen

Through Sohon Mullan located an Indian wanderer called by the Flathead tribesmen “Ignace Chapped Lips.” Mullan refers to him in his report as Aeneas. It was Ignace that suggested the pass over which the Mullan Road was later built called Sohon’s Pass. But Mullan was still not convinced that the route pointed out by Ignace was the best one, however, he sent party member Thomas Adams, a topographer, with Ignace in the spring of 1854 to make a close examination of the spot when the snow depth became more manageable.

Meanwhile in May 1854, Mullan went to take a look at the Clark Fork River valley through Plains, Thompson Falls, etc., to see how difficult it would be to build a wagon road and/or through that area. But it being spring with all the creeks and freshlets boiling with rapid, deep water that covered the trails, and the rocky mountainsides making travel elsewhere difficult, Mullan became convinced that it was not a suitable route either.

He wrote: “I have always exceedingly regretted that it was my fortune- to examine this route at so unfavorable a period, for I have been convinced by the later date that it possessed an importance, both as regards to climate and railroad facilities, enjoyed by no other line in the Rocky Mountains between latitudes 43 and 49 degrees.

“I would state that had I known in 1854 what I did not learn until 1859, I should have recommended that the section of the (Mullan military road) from Antoine Plant’s (near Spokane) to the Hell’s Gate should have followed, at any cost of construction it called for, the Clark’s route instead of the section via the Coeur d’Alene mission.”

But it was the deletion of the fourth route over the Bitterroots and headwaters of the St. Joe-the Nez Perce Trail-the one followed by the Catholic fathers when they arrived to set up the missions in the area in the 1840s that cinched the route from the Catholic Mission in the Coeur d’Alenes to Hell Gate. The Nez Perce Trail was eliminated from the running because of the “difficulties and disasters arising from snow and other obstacles that attended the trip of Mr. W.W. Finkham, one of our civil engineers,” Mullan reported.

So the Coeur d’Alene route sounded the best to the young lieutenant and it was time for him to look it over in person. In June 1854 “I procured the services of Bassile, a Coeur d’Alene Indian, to accompany me in the capacity of a guide through the Coeur d’Alene and St. Regis Borgia valleys.
… I was much pleased with the general aspect of these valleys,” Mullan wrote. “That much work was required to lay and construct a-first-class road was self-evident; but its direction and short distances, and the connexion made with the Spokane on the one side and with the Bitter Root on the other, were recommendations in its favor…”

Satisfied that he had done a thorough and complete job of the winter surveys, Mullan returned to his Willow Creek camp and finished his report to Stevens. Stevens added it to his multi-volume Pacific Railroad Survey, 1853-55, which was sent on to the nation’s capital where it found favor with the War Department Mullan followed the report to Washington in 1855, he wrote, where he “found the War Department, though favoring the project, averse to its continuance, at that me, giving as a reason that the appropriation was inadequate to the character of the work, unless carried on in connexion with some large military movement that would justify its expenditure; and as it was not deemed judicious to direct at that time any such movement, the appropriation for our road remained untouched in the vaults of the Treasury Department till a later day, and the measure itself was allowed to slumber …”

Plans Resume

After languishing in the vault for about two years, the road proposal was resurrected in the fall of 1857 when Stevens, now the newly elected nonvoting representative from the territory, arrived in Washington, D.C. There he lobbied successfully to have the War Department endorse it, Congress to fund it and Mullan to lead it (Dyer the protests of several other topographical engineers in the U.S. Army who coveted the project themselves).

On May 21, 1858 the Olympia Pioneer and Democrat newspaper reprinted an article from the New York Journal of Commerce dated March 31, 1858. It announced: “The Secretary of War (John B. Floyd) has issued orders to Lieut. John Mullan, U.S.A., to proceed immediately to the Columbia River and organize a force to commence at once the work of opening a wagon road from Fort Walla Walla on the Columbia River, to Fort Benton, on the Missouri.

“The intention of the preliminary is to demonstrate the perfect feasibility of the route, and to open a summer trail for emigrants.

“Lieut. Mullan is well and favorably known to the public as having been connected with Gov. Stevens’ great survey for the Northern Pacific Railroad, during which he discovered the celebrated pass through the Rocky Mountains, between the head waters of the Prickly Pear Creek on the east and the little Blackfoot river on the west, known as Mullan’s Pass, and through which the road is so easy that Lieut. Mullan in his report says he passed over it in a wagon with his horses on a trot … it will demonstrate the good judgment of Gov. Stevens in proposing that the work be approached at once from the Pacific, rather than be the usual tedious and expensive operations of commencing such roads from the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains … By adopting the present plan, a savings of at least one year’s time will be effected.”

In April 1858 Mullan left New York enroute to Port Dalles, Oregon to organize his expedition. After arriving at his destination in May, he outfitted his group with the help of Army Capt. Thomas Jordan and they had barely begun the trip only to hear of the “lamentable defeat -of Colonel Steptoe on the Spokane plains” in a battle against about a thousand Indians, members of the Nez Perce, Spokane, Palouse, Coeur d’Alene and Yakima tribes. The tribes were becoming increasingly angry about losing their lands to the white settlers and became determined to prevent any more encroachment. The battleground, near present-day Rosalia, Wa, lay in Mullan’s path. Frustrated but leery, Mullan later wrote: “to construct the wagon road while the Indians were in a state of open hostility was out of the question: but it was necessary for me to possess authentic facts before I could either move forward or break up the expedition. During the interval I occupied my men in building bridges over the Five-Mile and Ten-Mile creeks…

“On the 30th of May a reply was received from (the embattled men) from which I judged it impractical to prosecute the work this season. I therefore returned to the Dalles and disbanded my expedition, with the exception of Mr. Kolecki, my topographer, Mr. Sohon, my guide and the men necessary to take care of my stock, reporting the facts immediately to the War Department.”

Mullan then joined Colonel George Wright, as the topographic officer, in the September 1858 campaign against the rebellious Indians. The ensuing event resulted in the hanging of several Indian leaders and the massacre of more than 800 of the tribes’ horses. Mullan made copious notes and sketches of the campaign and battle, noting that they were indirectly associated with his own project, and submitted them to the WarDepartment.

But he was concerned that his interrupted project would be returned to the vault because of the Indian trouble, so decided to travel again to the nation’s capital to keep the project alive and, if possible, increase its funding from the initial $30,000 to $100,000.

He later wrote: “In the month of March 1859, the bill appropriating $100,000 for our work became law, and new instructions were issued to me in the same month by the War Department. With these I again started for Oregon on the 5th of April … My instructions left me liberal margin for collecting all the facts that bore either directly or indirectly upon the question of a railroad location, to which our immediate work ultimately tended.

“We reached the Dalles again on the 15th of May, where, organizing my party, I took up the line of march for Fort Walla Walla My escort this season had been increased to one hundred men (from 60), who were detailed from the companies of the 3rd artillery…”

Road Building Begins

Finally, the expedition was on its way. As it progressed, Mullan sent out several smaller parties under toe leadership of Sohon, Engle, Howard and Delacey in different directions to examine specific sites that could have potential for improving the route. Meanwhile, the main expedition reached Walla Walla from the Dalles on June 15. After hesitating for repairs and some further outfitting, the main parry finally left on July 1. The first section of the road made light work for the expedition because most of it was a high rolling prairie such as the Palouse with abundent water and grass for the stock. However, some of the route required road grading or repairs of bridges and ferries. On their way east, the men passed forts, homesteads and the site of Wright’s victory. Mullan noted on July 14, “We camped this day on the banks of the Nedwhuald, and at the same point where General Wright hung Qualtian (Qualchan), the noted Yakima chief, and several other Indians; from which the stream is known to many as Hangman’s creek. Poor creatures! Their doom, although in this instance a just one, is nevertheless, pitiable; had the white man been to them more just, fate had proved less harsh.”The following day, the group came across a band of Coeur d’Alene Indians who, Mullan wrote, were invited into his camp to eat and smoke. He continued, “afterwards (I) explained to them in detail our mission and object; they left, apparently satisfied, and with a promise to preserve friendly relations in the future (but) they are wily fellows…”

The Men pushed forward and soon entered the area of the Coeur d’Alene Lake and St. Joseph River basin. Mullan reported “Four miles up the valley we selected a suitable place for crossing by a ferryboat. We immediately set the whip-sawyers in the timber to get out the necessary lumber, and some men to burning tar, and, being provided with the necessary oakam, we built two flat boats, forty-two feet long, twelve feet broad and two feet deep. one for the St. Joseph’s and the other for the Coeur d’Alene.”

Later John W. Park was granted a franchise to operate a ferry where Mullan’s Road crossed the St. Joe and he charged fifty cents for a person who crossed afoot and the fee for each horse-drawn wagon was $5. But Park did not profit for long because in 1861, a new section of the road was built on the present road site eliminating the ferry’s monopoly.

On August 16, 1859, the expedition reached the Catholic Mission in the St. Joe valley. Again Mullan sent out his mapping crew while the bulk of the force cleared, laid down corduroys and built bridges through the boggy bottom land.

Mineral County

Sohon was sent ahead of the group to continue to study the section from the St. Regis- Borgia river valley to the Bitter Root River (now Clark fork) and returned to camp on Sept. 15 with a positive report Mullan wrote: the “data brought in by Mr. Sohon (convinced, me) that we had to content ourselves with the cheapest location that the peculiar features of the valleys of the Coeur d’Alene and St. Regis Borgia (sic) warranted . . . Our work, consequently, from the 16th of August to the 4th of December, 1859, consisted in cutting through this densely timbered section of 100 miles, building small bridges where required, grading in thousands of places (including) . . . an ascent of one and three-fourths miles, to the summit of the (Bitterroot) Mountains.”

But it was not easy.

“This work was heavy,” he wrote “Suffice it to say that we mastered the many difficulties with which its construction was fraught’ and reached our winter camp in the St. Regis Borgia valley on me 4th of December.”
The trip had been arduous and the expedition had paid the price.

The lieutenant continued his tale in his report:
“As we had been obliged to keep our stock in me mountains until the mountains were covered with snow, many bad died from starvation and exposure. I had at first intended to reach the Bitter Root river, but winter overtaking me, I did the best in my power, and made a point on the St. Regis Borgia below the last crossing. It was to attain this that I pushed my stock to the last point of endurance . . .”

Mullan sent what stock he could on to the Bitterroot valley. The rest he ordered slaughtered, butchered and frozen from which the men could eat until the weather warmed. But while the weather remained frigid and the snow deep, me military man ordered a camp of rude log huts erected that would house the men. “To the camp I gave the name of Cantonment Jordan,” he wrote later. “It was situated in a dense bed of timber, that furnished both building materiel and fuel, had many fine springs, and was securely sheltered from the winds by friendly rims of mountains.

“We erected an office, and occupied the entire winter in compiling field-notes, completing maps, as far as our material sufficed, and writing such memoirs and reports as would furnish me bureau with exact information on all points connected with our operations.

“The office hours of employees were from 10 a m. to 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. till 9 p.m. The men employed in gathering and preparing fuel, and the ordinary labors incident to camp life. Guard duty was kept up merely to preserve discipline, as the snow was an effectual barrier against Indian depredation or Indian surprise.”

Rumors

But word went out to regional papers that me expedition had fallen on especially hard time. The source of these reports may have stemmed from a letter written to W. Strachan by his brother John, who was a member of Mullan’s expedition. The letter, dated December 25, 1859 noted that, “snow commenced falling in October and had been from two to three feet deep at that time . . . many cattle and mules had been lost for want of food. On the 6th of December, a party of six men left the-Main Camp and proceeded to me place of operations; but the cold was so -severe that three of them were badly and one of them dangerously frozen. The mercury was 38 degrees below zero. The next day, at the camp, the mercury was frozen solid.”

*The alarm about the expedition was soon dealt with through a letter to me San Francisco Herald by Walter W. Johnson, a civil engineer who was also a member of the expedition. He wrote on Feb. 18, 1860:
“Editor of the Herald. Having seen many exaggerated accounts of the situation of Lieut. Mullan’s command published in the Oregon newspapers, I would be much obliged if you would insert the following statement, which may, perhaps relieve the anxiety of many of those who have either friends or relatives in the party.
“On the 26th of November last, Lieut. Mullan’s train arrived at their present camp on the Little Mesula or St. Regis Borgia river, within thirteen miles of the Bitter Root river (near present St. Regis) having Lieut. White with a portion of his escort in camp on a small prairie on the same stream, nine miles above: and Lieut. Lyon with the remainder of the escort, and half of me supplies of me commissary department in camp on small prairie six miles east of the summit of the Coeur d’Alene Mountains and fifteen miles west of Lieut. Mullan’s camp. On the 27th of November, it began to snow, and on the morning of the 28th, there was over a foot of snow on the ground. To work on the road, cutting and clearing heavy timber was impossible: and as the season was already far advanced, and winter was now upon us, it was deemed best to erect winter quarters where we were, in the woods, and await the opening of spring to resume our labors.

“A depot warehouse had already been erected, and an office was next built, in order to have reports, maps, etc. prepared as soon as possible. Next the houses for the laboring men were made; and by Christmas, all were finished and comfortable. The dwellings for officers were nearly completed when I left, (January 9 )- While this was going on at our camp, Lt. White and Lieut. Lyon, with their respective parties, were engaged in conveying the stores from their camps down to the main camp, called Cantonment Jordan. This was done on hand-sleds, as our cattle were all sent through the Bitter Root valley as soon as possible, after the fall of the snow. By me end of December, all the supplies for the escort were brought down and safely stowed away in a large warehouse erected by Lieut. Howard, which was filled to its ridgepole with flour, pork, coffee, sugar and all the other articles comprising commissary stores, and, on the beginning of January, the entire party were once more together.

“It has been stated that we have lost all our animals. The (civilian) escort, on account of their heavy train, requiring two trips to move it, have lost nearly half their cattle and mules, while Lieut. Mullan’s loss is only some few yoke of cattle, about six mules, nearly all his horses. some ten or fifteen head-bout thirty head of beef cattle, including estrays, which is his entire loss since leaving Walla Walla last dune.

“It is stated that we have suffered greatly from the cold. This is not so. Several of the men have had their fingers and toes nipped a little by the frost this would not have occured, if the supply of mittens, boots and shoes had reached us: but as Capt. Friedman was obliged to abandon them on the eastern side of the divide about forty miles our camp, we are obliged to make moccasins from raw hide, etc.: for protection. The suffering caused by this is but little, for under the good care of Dr. Mullan all were well, and none were little more than a week on account of this misfortune. The only case which is any way serious is that of a soldier, named Mahon, who started out to search for whiskey, was gone three days and was found so badly frozen that his life was despaired of. Both his feet were amputated, and when I left, his recovery was doubtful.

“We have an abundance of supplies to last us until spring. Some nine or ten men only have left the party . . . and only five left the party to better their condition: . . . I left the party in good health and spirits on the 9th of January, all cheerful and comfortable . . .”

The commissary officer, Lieut. H. B. Lyon, sent out requisition letters to the War Department with Johnson. One dated January 8, 1860 was to supercede the request of November 1859. It was requested that supplies for employees and troops either returning over (the} recently built road from Fort Benton to Fort Walla Walla or going from Fort Benton to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory were to include: 1500# bacon sides, 200# bacon hams, 2500# flour (in sacks) 100# crushed sugar, 240# soap, 6 bushels of salt, 10 gallons of molasses and 100 gallons of whiskey.

(Lieut. says the rations used from October 31, 1859 to July 1, 1860 equaled 22000 pounds of the original supplies of 24000 pounds which consisted of coffee, sugar, flour, beans, salt, candles, vinegar and soap and 8000 pounds of pork. 5000 additional pounds of rations were requested to the end of September.)
A special requesition made by Lt. Lyon, also dated January 8 (1860) from Cantonment Jordan was to include: 100# 3/4″ rope, 30 ox bows, 112 barrel of resin and 100# oakum. The lieutenant certified that the above requisition is correct and that the articles specified are absolutely requisite for the public service rendered so by the following circumstances: the rope and ox bows will be necessary to refit the quartermaster train for a return from Fort Benton to Fort Walla Walla, Washington Territory and the resin and oakum to make or repair the ferry-boats at the crossing of the several streams on the road.

Rumors Persist

But still the rumors of disaster plagued the expedition. On March 16, the Pioneer and Democrat reported “We have received additional news from Lieut. Mullan’s expedition, as late as the 18th of January. News has been received from Mr. Engle’s party, whom Lieut. Mullan sent to Fort Benton in November, and regarding whose safety serious fears were entertained, lest he had been lost in a snow-storm, or that his whole party had been massacred by the Blackfoot.

“He made the trip safely to the Missouri and back in forty-six days, and crossed and re-crossed the Rocky Mountains, with horses, in December and January. Thus proving most conclusively that though earth work on the wagon road could not go on, that traveling at all seasons is practible over the dividing ridges, and that snow offers no serious obstacle to the railroad line.”

And the issue of snowfall continued to concern Mullan as he noted in his report “The question of snow had been with me an all-important one, and with the view of arming myself with the facts as to its fall arid depth. I had snow gauges prepared along the route, either by cueing off the tops of trees or planting prepared posts graduated to a scale of feet and inches, so that when the mailmen passed, which they did every month, they might note its depth.”

Camp Moves

From his measurements, which showed the snow depth varying from two and a half feet in the lower river valleys to rune feet at the summit, Mullan began to suspect that this route might not be as viable as he believed in 1854. More confirmation came from the area Indians who explained that they never used the route in the winter but always followed the Clark Fork River on its path through the mountains. Mullan wrote: “The point chosen for our winter camp was fifteen miles from the Bitter Root ferry (now St. Regis), through a densely timbered section, involving heavy labor. The winter at the main camp proved severe while at the ferry it was generally mild and pleasant, with less snow by one and a half feet, and, although only fifteen miles distant, like a new climate.”

After making his comparison, Mullan decided that he would continue work after all: “I determined at once to throw forward all my men upon the Bitter Root, there build boats for the transportation of our supplies up the river, and resume work . . .

To carry our supplies this distance of fifteen miles by hand involved much hard labor. The men transported on their backs two months’ supplies, all their tents and personal baggage, and setting to work at the crossing got out the necessary lumber (for six boats) . . . to be used in transporting our supplies and baggage up the river as our work progressed.”

With this project underway, Mullan appointed Lieut. J. L. White to oversee the work and left to rendezvous with some Indians and plan his spring and summer work.

One concern that had been on Mullan’s mind throughout the winter was the proving that the road was a viable route for the quick transport of military I troops from east to west. This reasoning was behind the original road proposal made by then (1854) Secretary of War Jefferson Davis who would become the leader of the Confederacy in the war between the states. As Mullan noted: The success of such a movement would prove conclusively that a result had been obtained.”

After considering the potential progress of the road building, Mullan dispatched W. W. Johnson to Washington, D.C. to recommend that the Army “send three hundred recruits from St. Louis to Fort Benton . . . by steamers . . . with four months’ supplies, and I would meet them at Fort Benton with my train, with which they could make the trip to Walla Walla in sixty days.”

Having finished the plans for the summer work and sent word of the progress to Washington, D.C., Mullan headed back to the Bitterroot Valley to see to supplies and horses for his party. He continues in his report “In company with Lieutenant Lyon I then visited the Pend d’Oreille mission, to procure fresh vegetables for my men who were already affected with the symptoms of scurvey. We had at this time about twenty-five cases of this disease, all of which readily yielded under the care of my brother, Dr. James A. Mullan, to the specifics of fresh vegetables and vinegar.”

The men returned to the main camp with the vegetables in Late March. Work on the northeast bank of the Clark Fork River was progressing. This is the area that now forms the center of Mineral county. But that was about to change.

Johnson, the engineer, sent a letter to Secretary of War Floyd dated April 9, 1860, in which he states there were then 88 civilian men in the command of Lt. John Mullan, five engineers and topographers; two rodmen; one astronomer, fourteen general assistants, masters and expressmen; fifteen teamsters; thirty-two laborers; eight cooks; four packers; four herders and two carpenters.

(In 1861 one of the military men, a Private Donald McDonald, deserted, he was a mower, gathered grasses for the stock. The pay for those attached to the military was 35 cents per day!)

A Scenic Barrier

“Mr. Sohon, in his examination of the previous year, brought to my notice that the spur of the mountains thirty miles from the ferry jutted upon the river bank for six miles, leaving no berme over which we could lay our road (this is the Scenic Rock area, west of Alberton).

“This would force us either to cross the stream, make a side-hill cut through this length, or thurn the mountain by its rear. I endevored to accomplish the latter, and in the month of April devoted several days to examining the entire country, and especially the route known as Brown’s Cut-off, but I found the mountains so high and abrupt . . . that I gave up all hopes of attaining my ends in this direction.

“To make this six-mile cut through rocky spurs was an undertaking that I almost feared to attempt.”But he did, and he succeeded at a cost.

“On the 1st of May I commenced upon the cut around the Big Mountain, and by the 10th had my entire force of citizens and soldiers employed. My camps were formed at its west-base, where a small creek and an abundance of timber afforded all the conveniences required.

“In order to obtain the practicable elevation on account of the abrupt rocky faces of the spurs, I carried the line up a ravine, until, gaining 1000 feet. I wound around the mountain sides, making the reentering angles by gentle curves, until the entire six miles was completed.

“It was a severe piece of work, and cost us the labor of 150 men for six weeks. Being rocky in most places, we were compelled to blast, when, by a premature explosion, one of our men, (Fred) Sheridan, lost one of his eyes, and another, Robert P. Booth, was severely stunned…”
But the job was soon completed and the camp moved eastward.

Mullan’s proposal to have a military unit traverse the new road was approved and on March 31, 1860 an order was given that the 300-man contingent, under the command of Major George A. H. Blake, First Dragoons, be organized and sent On May 3 1860, 292 enlisted men and eight officers embarked on P. Choteau and Co.’s steamers Spread Eagle, Key West, and Chippewa from St. Louis on the waters of the Missouri River. Not only would they be the first military contingent to move over Mullan’s new road, but also the first to travel by boat to the river’s headwaters and Fort Benton.

The Army Moves

One of the officers on this so-called Blake Expedition was Lieut. August V. Kautz, a former West Point classmate of Mullan’s. He kept a daily diary of the troop’s travels, the contents of which appeared in an article published in the July 1946 Pacific Northwest Quarterly. Traveling with the men, he noted was James A. Mullan, John’s brother, who had been the Mullan expedition’s physician in the early days of the roadbuilding.

Kautz wrote about the problem with men deserting enroute, the dangers the boats encountered and what a nuisance one man, a Lt. Henry S. Pearce whose drinking bouts off and on duty finally lead to his being court-martialed eight years later, was to the group. The slaughter of buffalo, wolves and bears by men shooting from the riverboat decks also preoccupied Kautz who wrote, “Wolves afford me a pleasure, as also bears, but buffalo seem so helpless, and die so hard.”

By June 29 the contingent received word that Mullan was still west of Hell Gate but had sent more than 30 pack animals to Fort Benton where Blake’s group landed on July 2. They soon found Lt. Hylan Benton Lyon of Mullan’s group waiting for him with some beef cattle and about 25 wagons on the way.
But Blake’s men did not leave their camp, instead they waited for Mullan’s arrival and passed much of the time hiking, fishing and reading.

On July 30 Kautz wrote: “We begin to count the hours now to the arrival of Lt. Mullan.”
“Lt. Mullan arrived in this afternoon by Teton route,” Kautz added on August 1. “A heavy rainstorm prevailed this afternoon. It rained very hard, and the wind with great violence. I had a long talk with Mullan about his road and his troubles. He is decidedly more monomaniacal in his demonstrations than I ever knew him. He imagines everybody who is not in favor of his road to be against it . . . White and Lyon came up, and spent the evening in camp, but Mullan did not come up, much to the Major’s disgust. (This is Major Blake with whom Mullan was angry for discharging his expedition’s astronomers earlier in the year. Blake believed that Mullan’s funds were exhausted but word arrived soon after the dismissals that Congress had granted the Mullan group an additional $100,000. Because Mullan no longer had his astronomers, his expedition had no official record of the eclipse that took place that summer.)

But on August 2, Kautz noted that he “went down at Mullan’s request and came up with him to see the Maj. Their interview proved more amicable than I anticipated . . .
“Lt. M. has turned over all the wagons he has in possession, and takes our pack train in exchange. The Major intimidated Mullan into letting him have all the wagons by telling him that he would not move without them. Mullan is quite monomaniac about his road.”

On September 9 the Pioneer and Democrat announced that Mullan had completed the road to Fort Benton and was enroute back to Walla Walla “in advance of Major Blake’s command. repairing and improving the road.”

But the project was beginning to take its told on Mullan as he wrote, “My health during this time had seriously failed me, and I had to intrust the general charge of the work to Lieutenant Lyon and Mr. W.W. Johnson.” Soon, however, the expedition completed its object.

Military Foray Ends

The Blake expedition was the only important movement of military troops over the Mullan Road and it arrived at Fort Walla Walla at 3 p.m. on October 4, 1860, 50 days after it left Fort Benton 6I6 miles to the east. Mullan wrote: “Thus ended this military experiment . . . and the success that attended it… consititute(s) sufficient commentary upon its feasibility for future military movements towards the north Pacific.”

But the story does not end there.

Mullan organized a new expedition in May 1861 whose object was to travel the road, again from west to east, and make any repairs and modifications necessary. Among these, he wrote, “was to improve the road by cutting the stumps close to the ground, avoiding as many crossings of the Coeur d’Alene and St. Regis Borgia rivers as possible, by side cuts along the mountains, and by bridging those I could not avoid . . . We built twenty heavy bridges on this (Coeur d’Alene) river which . . . Occupied us until the 15th of September, when crossing the summit of the Bitter Root mountains, we reached the head source of the St. Regis Borgia river, on which a similar system was initiated.”

By November 1861 Mullan and his men set up their winter camp near Hell Gate.
“I here mention,” he reported later, “with regret a sad accident that occured to a citizen in passing from one to another of our camps, and which will tend to show the degree of cold we experienced during January. He (Charles Schafft) had left one of the camps with the intention of going to the Deer Lodge valley. Night and severe cold overtaking him before he could reach another camp, he halted to build a fire, and being wet endeavored to slip off his moccasins, when he found them frozen to his feet. He became alarmed, and retracing his steps reached the point he had started from, late at night, but with both feet frozen, and on their being thawed in a tub of water all the flesh fell off. The poor fellow suffered intensely, and his life was only saved by his suffering the amputation of both legs above the knees; the operation performed by Dr. George Hammond, U.S. Army. A purse of several hundred dollars was raised for him, and-he was left to the kind charity of the fathers of the Pend d’Oreille mission, where he remained up to the date of our leaving the mountains.”

Final Trip

The party reached Fort Benton on June 8, 1861 and after a few days, Mullan began his return to Walla Walla Again they made repairs and improvements, and where they couldn’t, they offered recommendations for changes, such as the segment of road that went over the Scenic Rocks area west of present-day Alberton. “No other material points need attention until we come to the Nemote Creek. Here, instead of taking Brown’s Cut-off, I should now prefer to excavate a line from one and a half to two miles along the Bitter Root, and say, from one hundred to two hundred feet above the river, in order to get above all the slides, and by this means shorten the road two miles and avoid a steep hill. This done, there would be no further work required till reaching the Bitter Root ferry.”

The St. Regis River valley, he wrote, “we lost six bridges this past season.”

Finally Mullan finished his obsession when he reached Walla Walla again in late August where “I disposed of my property at public auction, disbanded my expedition and on the 11th of September started for Washington City to make my report to the War Department.

“Thus ended my work in the field, costing seven years of close and ardous attention, exploring and opening up a road of six hundred and twenty-four miles from the Columbia to the Missouri river, at a cost of $230,000.”

‘ Lieut. James E. Bradley who served under Mullan sometime during the original construction, later wrote that the construction of the road involved 120 miles of difficult timber cutting, 25 feet broad, 30 measured miles of excavation, 15 to 20 feet wide, the traversing of 424 miles of open timbered country and rolling prairie, and the building of hundreds of bridges and several ferry boats. Mullan did not regard his road as completed and estimated that a further sum of $700,000 would have been required to bring it to a state of perfection he desired.

Superior’s Wild & Wooly Days

Mabel C. Olson
Superior, Montana
Interview with Mrs. Lizzie (Sarah E.) Miles

I came to Superior from Kansas in 1891. My husband, Ade (Adrian) Miles, had gone on ahead a month earlier. That was the year Superior was moved to its present site. There were just three or four homes. But seven saloons. A. P. Johnston’s store was in the old Shamrock building, where the Corner Service Station now stands. Across the street was a drug store built and run by Ernest Heggerman. He sold out to A. P. Johnston. It was run as a general merchandise store in turn by Johnston, Charles Stillinger, William McBride (Heggerman’s brother-in-law) and, at the present time, by E. B. Hord.

Before 1891, Superior was situated at the mouth of Johnston Creek, across the river and a little west of what is now the Leib ranch. Richard Marsh ran a dairy on that ranch. A ferry was run from Superior across the Missoula River, for the traffic from Cedar Creek. Johnston ran a combination of store saloon, and dance hall in a stone building where the garage of the Johnston ranch now stands. It catered to the miners going through on the road, which then ran just north of the Johnston ranch, following the river bank.

In the early days, Indians passing through used to camp in the hollow where the Johnston ranch lies. They would get drunk, whoop and yell, scaring people nearly to death.

The first day we came here, Old Man (Alfred )Lozeau got Miles and me to work for him at his ranch (now known as the the Milwaukee Ranch, about seven miles east of Superior.) He was a Frenchman, but his wife was a quarter-breed Indian, though she looked black enough for a full-blood. She was fat and jolly, and I liked to hear her talk and watch her shake when she laughed. She used to smoke a corncob pine, the kind they make themselves. I’d often hear her call, “Lozeau.” He’d answer, “Huh?” “Come build fire, Lozeau; that all you good for.”

She liked her drink pretty well, and used to make raspberry wine. She’d say, “Um, good. Just pour down throat from bottle.”

They had a whole brood of young ones: Louis, Joe, ‘Dolphe, Puss, Phonzine, and Mary. Mary married Charley Ures, one of the quartette that used to sing at the Thomas (now Ordean) Hotel. ‘Dolphe used to fiddle for the dances. He’d get liquored up, and play with his eyes shut, all night the same tune. Most of the miners at the dance drank up pretty freely, and before the night was over, they’d all be singing and having a gay time. “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-Night,” was the most popular tune, and usually it was a hot time.

The stub of the Northern Pacific was just completed in 1891. There were no passenger cars, just a common box-car, with homemade seats of the sort they used in the old school house. It was rough, like riding on a lumber wagon.

I came through on the road, from Kansas, about the next week after the stub was laid. The Missoula agent didn’t want to sell me a ticket at first; he didn’t know if the road was put through here yet. He finally said, “I can sell you a ticket, and you can go as far as the train will take you; and if you can’t get where you want to go, you can get your money back.” I said, “Nothin” doing; you don’t catch me walking to Iron Mountain.” When he found out that was where I was headed for, he said he was sure the track had been laid that far.

And I was the first woman to walk across the first bridge across the Missoula River at Superior, the one the Iron Mountain Tunnel and Missoula County built. There was just the thickness of two boards to walk on, with a space between planks, and I was afraid to look down, for it seemed that any minute I must go through, into the river. Jimmy Harmon went ahead of me, packing my girl Laura, who was a baby then.

Before the bridge was built, there was the ferry boat, owned by Johnston and rowed by Joe Charette. Charley Harmon use to have a boat. I’ve crossed the river with him when there were sheets of ice floating down, hindering the boat and making a chilly business of it.

The Harmon’s were some of the early settlers of Superior, coming in the late 1890′s. There were five brothers of them, Charley, Jimmy, Ernest, Bill, and Pete. When I came here the flat on the South side of the river (now Harmon’s, Eidell’s, and Kelly’s additions) was heavily timbered. They cleared off the Harmon’s ranch and built the ranch-house, which was meant for me to live in. It’s one of the old landmarks of Superior, what’s left of it. Then Jimmy Harmon built a log house, across the river, north of it.

I remember when they charivaried Charley Harmon, after he married Veronica Krupp. Everyone turned out for a charivari, with bells, whistles, and even saws. On this particular night, they had a big circle-saw, hauled in on their shoulders. Billy Bonnett was one of those who carried it. We pounded it with a pipe with a knot on one end of it, and made so much racket we couldn’t hear ourselves think.

It was on an Easter Sunday. Charley Harmon was too close even in those days to dig up a treat, but Jimmy Harmon had some apples and I had a cake.
Mrs. Harmon was wearing a long, trailing dress. She had just come out here, was very religious, and not used to such carryings-on. So she was nearly fainting.
Bonnett was the sort to carry off things with a high hand. He went up to her, and said, “Usually we got to kiss the bride.”

Mrs. Harmon stood with hands crossed, and turned white and red by turns. Charley spoke up timidly: “No, I don’t think you’d better kiss my bride.” Bonnett didn’t but he was the kind who would, if he had felt like it.

Mrs. Harmon afterwards said, “Well, some may like this sort of think, but not me.”

There used to be two stages between the Iron Mountain Tunnel and Superior, run by Vern (DeVern G.) Wilkinson and Joe Charette. They carried the mail, and often passengers going to dances held in the boarding-house, which was run by Mr. and Mrs. William Brabazon.

When the Brabazon’s sold out, the furniture was bought by Johnston, and most of it is now in the Johnston farmhouse, about a mile east of Superior.
For a long time, a saloon wasn’t allowed at the Tunnel. But they finally got one. And after celebrating there on pay days, the miners would get together a sleigh-load, and go ripping, tearing about the country, having a high old time.

Charley Jamieson built the Thomas Hotel. He sold it to Johnston, who rented it to Thee (Theordore H.) Thomas. Thomas ran it in high style.

I remember a Christmas tree we had there once on the third floor. Johnston had fixed up as Santa Claus, rigged out with a black suit and cotton beard. He came in by a ladder, through a front window on the third floor. In those days we didn’t have electric lights, only coal oil lamps and the colored candles on the tree. Johnston got too close to the candles, and his whiskers caught fire. Grandma (Mrs. Maria) Riefflin grabbed her plaid shawl, one she had brought from Berlin, Germany, and with it smothered the blaze. By that time, there was a regular stampede, everybody hitting for the stairs. A bunch of big men held them back, or some would have been trampled to death.

Those were pretty rough times. The worst deed I ever knew of in Superior happened in the old Shamrock, in the saloon in the front part. A blank stranger came up to Curly, the bar-tender (“Curly” Coleman), and stabbed him through the heart. Tom Meininger, the crippled constable with one wooden leg, held him for a few days, then let him go. There was no sheriff here, and Missoula officials weren’t bothered much about Superior law-breaking.

Alec Berg was running a pack train up Cedar Creek in the early days. He was hurt a bit once when he sat out for the hills during a drunk. He had the pack train tailed up, so when the lead cayuse got his rope caught to a tree, the animals stood there, packs and all, till Alec sobered up in the morning.

I saw Bill Beach soon after we came here. He wanted to hire Miles to work in the mine, and me to do the cooking, but he’d only pay next to nothing, so I wouldn’t hear it. He was a big-bodied man with short legs. He wore his straight, black hair short around the neck and long every place else, with big whiskers tucked into his bib overall. I told him: “I’d like to take you by the whiskers and lead you around the country.” He laughed, and answered, “You’re the first woman I ever heard complain about a man’s whiskers.”

Trout Creek those days was worked by a big, tall Norwegian named Tom Silverson, and “Russian Bill” (Michael Forrest). I never heard Bill called anything else; he was a Russian, sure enough. He used to get drunk, and Johnston would herd him, acting as his guardian. They had no scissors nor razors in the hills, and they’d come to town looking like a bunch of billy goats.

Murray, “the Roller”, was more like a shaggy dog than a man, what with his whiskers and long hair hanging down his shoulders. He asked if he could camp on our place, when we were in the Jimmy Harmon cabin west of town; he didn’t do us any harm, so we let him. He rolled two big logs under a big tree, and slept between them. He was followed around by a ring-necked dog he called Bob. When he couldn’t bum a quarter off anybody, he’d live on lambsquarter greens, eating them like spare grass.

He never bothered us at the ranch, and used to buy a quart of milk, whenever he could steal a dime to pay for it. Mrs. John Connally, who ran the Northern Pacific lunchroom, kept cows; Murray used to sneak up to them and milk into an old pail he kept. When he’d drunk his fill of the warm, unstrained milk, held call Bob to finish the pail. He carried a cane, with a spike at the tip, that he made pretty useful. Folks used to say, “There goes old Murray, “the Roller,” sniping cigar stubs.”

We called him “the Roller,” because he’d watch for the miners to come from the hills, then “roll” them. They finally got tired of him, and ran him out of town. I heard he got caught by a train on a railway bridge somewhere near Butte, and was killed.

(Names and dates I verified through the following records in the County Clerk and Recorder’s office in Mineral County court house: “Grantor” and “Grantee” books; “Mining Locations” index. Where I could find no record of the name, Mr. John McMillan supplied the information I needed. He has been county clerk and recorder over a long period of time, and is also an old settler.

Mrs. Lizzie Miles’ sayings

I could not take notes fast enought to reproduce Mrs. Miles, pungent speech. She uses a fund of sayings that are not, I think, local. I have copied a few, in case they may be of interest).

Imageous of unconcsarned make a conscarned fool robusteous the commonalty of people larruping good

He baked himself a cooky; let him eat it.

tripping the cockawhoop gable end out (seat worn out of pants) rumbustious high kafluters (proud people) a whole passel whomperjawed (awry) cantywampus (catacorner)

fum-diddles (fripperies) het up scarce as hen’s teeth butters no parsnips lallygagging mojering along mooching along go at a snail’s gallop slonchwise

I ain’t lost nothing thar that I need to look for. (Used as a refusal to an invitation.)

broncho slippers, broncho brogans (horse shoes)

Mineral County History

Historic Trails -
Built as a military road in 1859-60, Montana’s first highway–the Mullan Road–followed an ancient Native American trail and linked Fort Benton (MT) with Walla Walla (WA). Today a portion near Alberton, along the Clark Fork River and I-90, is open to hikers and bicycle traffic. The County also boasts part of the Hiawatha Trail. Built along the Milwaukee Railroad right-of-way, it’s a popular biking/ hiking route (with tunnel) west of St. Regis.

The Gold Rush -
Numerous boomtowns sprung up in Mineral County in the late 1860s, when gold was discovered on Cedar Creek, just south of Superior. Just as quickly, most of those towns died when the ore began to pan out. The Locomotion -
The nation’s first transcontinental railroad, the Northern Pacific, entered Mineral County in the 1890s. The first partially electrified railway, the Milwaukee, Pacific & St. Paul arrived in 1907. Both railways opened the area to growth and economic opportunity that continues today.

The Lumberjack -
Mineral County’s first large lumber mill was built on a river peninsula north of St. Regis in 1897, beginning the lumberjack era. Timber remains an important part of the culture and the economy.

The Disasters -
During its history, Mineral County has experienced its share of natural disasters. Some 10,000 years ago, the nearby Missoula Valley was part of a vast lake (Glacial Lake Missoula), which was formed by an ice dam in Idaho. That dam broke multiple times, sending flood waters nearly to the Pacific Ocean. Although part of Missoula County at the time, this area also experienced the Great Fires of 1910. St. Regis, DeBorgia and Haughan, as well as the County’s historic Savenac Tree Nursery, were caught in the flames and embers, but all rose again.

The Builders -
Around the time of the St. Regis Flood of 1933, the County was home to a large contingent of Civilian Conservation Corps workers. The largest gathering of workers was at Camp Taft, located across from the Savenac Tree Nursery. Part of a Depression- era work strategy, the “CCCs” did much to improve flood plains and roads in the area, providing protection from high water and better access to the forests. The Corps of Engineers later improved on this work, making the County the safer, tamer, place that we all know today.

The Storykeepers -
Mineral County is rich in stories and our local museums are the perfect place to learn. So plan a visit to the Mineral County Museum in Superior and the Railroad Museum in Alberton. You can also find a number of our local sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, such as the school houses in Alberton, Superior and DeBorgia.