[Vision2020] One Hundred Years Ago Today (August 20, 1910)

[lfalen]

Thanks for posting. The Latah County Historical Society has a copy of "The Big Burn"
Roger
-----Original message-----
From: "Tom Hansen" thansen at moscow.com
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2010 05:52:23 -0700
To: "Moscow Vision 2020" vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] One Hundred Years Ago Today (August 20, 1910)

> The fire of 1910, or as it is otherwise known as the "Big Burn of 1910".
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> Courtesy of the Spokesman-Review and their thorough series, located at:
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> http://www.spokesman.com/1910fire/
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> Great fire wiped out wild towns of Taft, Grand Forks
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> Logging outposts reviled for boozing, brothels
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> Back in 1910, respectable folk believed that the wild, debauched towns of
> Taft and Grand Forks deserved to burn in hell.
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> They got their wish. Both towns were wiped clean by the Big Burn of 1910.
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> Search for them today, and you'll find nothing but a dusty and uninhabited
> freeway exit (Taft) and a tangle of undergrowth below the Route of the
> Hiawatha mountain-bike trail (Grand Forks).
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> But from 1907 to 1910, those old towns howled.
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> Both owed their existence to the most expensive and audacious railroad
> engineering feat in the nation's history - the construction of the Milwaukee
> Road over (and through) the Bitterroot Range from the St. Regis River in
> Montana to the St. Joe River in Idaho. These rough-hewn towns sprang up
> overnight as work began on the line's dozens of tunnels and trestles.
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> Taft was the biggest and most notorious of the new railroad towns. Its
> population shifted with the arrival of practically every work train, but at
> its height it was said to be 3,200.
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> At one point the town had 23 saloons. It also had, according to one
> contemporary letter-writer, "300 women and only one decent one."
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> They served the railroad work gangs, who were not exactly model citizens. In
> the spring of 1907 alone, 18 murders were committed. Sometimes, no one even
> knew a murder had taken place until the spring thaw came and a corpse
> appeared from under a snowbank.
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> Taft was also the scene of Balkans-style ethnic tensions. In one notorious
> incident, the self-proclaimed "king" of a large contingent of Montenegrin
> laborers was shot by a foreman. An ethnic riot nearly flared; subsequent
> shootouts left the foreman and five Montenegrins dead. 
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> The very name Taft was a kind of ironic joke, according to a story told in
> both "Up the Swiftwater" by Sandra A. Crowell and David O. Asleson, and in
> "The Big Burn" by Timothy Egan (two books which provided much of the
> information in this story).
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> The story, possibly apocryphal, goes like this: In 1907, William Howard
> Taft, then the Secretary of War, came through the unnamed - but already
> notorious - work camp and stopped to make a speech from the platform of his
> Northern Pacific train. He berated the town as a blight and a smudge on the
> American landscape and told the assembled throng to clean up their act. The
> railroad workers gave him a big, drunken cheer (or maybe jeer) - and then,
> by acclamation, they named the town in his honor.
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> Taft burned down at least twice before the Big Burn, each time being reborn
> with more saloons and brothels than before.
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> In 1909, a Chicago Tribune reporter came through and called Taft "the
> wickedest city in America." 
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> But there was plenty of competition. When Grand Forks hit its stride, it
> "quickly went into first place for that honor," said ranger William W.
> Morris.
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> Grand Forks was at the mouth of Cliff Creek on the Idaho side, down in a
> lush hollow far below the tracks. It was built around a muddy square,
> surrounded on all sides by rough wooden saloons, chow houses, boarding
> houses and "hotels."
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> Here's how the Forest Service's Joe Halm - famous for his Big Burn exploits
> - described Grand Forks in a memoir:
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> "During the mornings, the court (square) was deserted except for a few
> sobering stragglers sitting on empty beer kegs piled in front of the 12 or
> 15 saloons.
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> ". Toward evening, the town would begin to show signs of life and as night
> came on and as oil lamps began to glow, player pianos began their tinny din,
> an orchestra here and there began to tune up. Women daubed with rouge came
> from the cribs upstairs and sat at lunch counters or mingled with the
> ever-increasing throng of gamblers and rough laborers from the camps. As the
> hours wore on, the little town became a roaring, seething riotous brawl of
> drinking, dancing, gambling and fighting humanity."
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> Grand Forks had burned twice before, once in 1909 by accident and again in
> July 1910, when a prostitute poisoned a customer and set her room on fire to
> cover up the murder. By August, the town had revived in hastily built
> shacks, tents and even a treehouse, which became the place of business for
> two high-flying prostitutes.
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> Yet on the afternoon of Aug. 20, 1910, when the winds whipped the mountains
> into a roaring, red-hot frenzy, both Taft and Grand Forks were defenseless.
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> The saloon-dwelling population of Taft, to the disgust of the forest
> rangers, showed no gumption when it came to saving the town. The rangers
> went from saloon to saloon trying to round up men to work the firelines, but
> got few takers. In Egan's words, Taft's denizens had decided that "if they
> were going to be burned to death in an inferno . they would go down drunk."
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> They tried to drain as much whiskey from the barrels as they could before
> the evacuation train came through. Everyone was staggering toward the
> platform when the burning embers came raining down and the trees began to
> topple. The train made it out just before the wall of flame hit.
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> There was only one fatality - a drunk whose clothes caught fire before he
> got on the train. A ranger rolled him in the dirt, extinguished him and
> hauled him to the train. When the man got to Saltese, he was wrapped in
> bandages and put in a dark boxcar to recover. A fellow drunk came in to see
> him, lit a match - and caught the man's oil-soaked bandages on fire. He
> burned to death.
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> In Grand Forks, the inhabitants had time only to race to the train platform
> at nearby Falcon before the saloons, tents and shacks vanished "in a sniff,"
> according to Egan. 
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> The inhabitants, along with the frightened population of Falcon, huddled at
> the depot, hoping a rescue train was on the way. It was. An engineer backed
> an engine and boxcar six miles to Falcon. The frightened people grabbed on
> to whatever handhold they could find and, after a harrowing trip, finally
> made it to Avery.
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> Both Taft and Grand Forks made desultory attempts to rebuild, but by 1911,
> the forest rangers managed to shut down the last tent saloon in Grand Forks.
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> Taft revived partially and served as a staging point when the Milwaukee Road
> electrified its line over the Bitterroots. But Taft never regained its
> former size or notoriety. By the 1930s, the Federal Writers Project reported
> that Taft consisted of only four buildings, all abandoned.
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> Today, travelers who take the Taft exit on I-90 won't even see abandoned
> buildings. There's a sand pile for use by freeway snowplows and some piles
> of old railroad ties. The old main street is covered by the interstate.
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> That's more than you'll find at Grand Forks. The green forest reclaimed it
> long ago. You can drive to the spot where Cliff Creek empties into Loop
> Creek, but rangers say you can find the old townsite "only with metal
> detectors."
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> And what might those metal detectors find? Maybe the wires and mechanisms of
> old player pianos, which played their last ragtime tunes in August 1910.
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> Patrons gather at a saloon in Grand Forks, circa the summer of 1908. The
> patrons' attire and flies on the wall indicate it's summer, and the electric
> light on the ceiling indicates a time before a power plant at Taft was shut
> down in early 1909.
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> http://media.spokesman.com/photos/2010/08/19/GRAND_FORKS_HISTORICAL_t620.jpg
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> Seeya round town, Moscow.
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> Tom Hansen
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> Moscow, Idaho
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> "Evening found our little party many miles from camp. We saw the remains of
> an elk and several deer; also a grouse hopping about with feet and feathers
> burned off - a pitiful sight. Men who quenched their thirst from small
> streams immediately became deathly sick. The clear, pure water running
> through miles of ashes had become a strong, alkaline solution, polluted by
> dead fish, killed by the lye. Thereafter, we drank only spring water."
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> - Joe Halm, fire fighter (August 27, 1910)
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