The 1910 Fires and the Brunelle Story

[Andy Brunelle]

The 100^th anniversary of Big Blowup will be observed August 20-21, 2010 in ceremonies in northern Idaho and Montana and this event serves as an inspiration to compile a Brunelle family story of the 1910 fire that swept through Wallace. The story revolves around Alvan Brunelle and Marguerite Francis Haney, both of whom lived through the 1910 fire, later meeting and then married in 1915. Because of them we are here today, and this story is a way they can be remembered.

PROLOGUE

In 1894 the Brunelle family moved to the little settlement of Murray, Idaho, about 30 miles north of Wallace. Arriving from the Helena, Montana area was Thomas Alcime Brunelle, his wife Jessie and four children, including seven-year old Alvan, who was born in Red Lake Falls, Minnesota in 1887. The other three, Barney, four years old, his sister Harriette, two and the baby Every, just a few months old. To house the family, Thomas, or “Little Pa” as he was called, was a sawyer for the mines in the Murray area. He built a log cabin near the mouth of Tiger Gulch where it joined Prichard Creek.

Not long after the Brunelles came to Idaho the Haney family made its way to the Silver Valley. It was in 1894 or 1895 that a widow named Mary Loretta Moloney Haney brought her two daughters and two sons and they settled in Burke Canyon. Mary was a cook for the Union Pacific Railroad where she fed the crews working on rail cars and rail repairs in the area. Marguerite was a youngster in those days, born in 1889 (she had always thought it was 1890 until she signed up for Social Security in 1955 and found out she was a year older).

The boarding house run by Mary Maloney Haney. She is at the right with the cow, daughter Marguerite Haney is at the far left with a dog.

Although both residents of Shoshone County, we don’t know if the Brunelles and Haneys knew one another at that time. In those years the Brunelles moved back and forth between Murray and Wallace. In 1900 a property on King Street in Wallace was purchased by Little Pa and a home was built. The six-room home was built on cleared land next to Placer Creek. By 1905 there were two more Brunelle girls in the family, Jeannette, born in 1902, and Frances, born in 1905.

Little Pa Brunelle worked as a teamster, making deliveries to the mines and through this work, probably between 1897 and 1899, Little Pa and his son Alvan became acquaintances with - but smart enough to avoid hiring - a fellow named Albert Edward Horsley. Horsley was a fellow liveryman at the time and also used the pseudonym Harry Orchard. After losing his business in 1899 Horsley became a mucker in the mines, and later got tied into the Western Federation of Miners. By the end of 1905 Horsley was in southwest Idaho plotting the assassination of former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg.

Along the way Alvan befriended a miner named E M “Arrastras” Smith, who had mining claims on Prichard Creek a couple miles west of Murray. Alvan had dropped out of school and he and Little Pa helped grubstake Smith’s fledging operation, known as the Golden Winnie Mine. Indeed, one key event in the partnership was Alvan’s trip to Wallace where he intended to purchase a new pair of shoes, but arriving too late and the shoe stores were closed. The casinos were open, however.

Alvan was unusually lucky that night and with his winnings he fully stocked Smith's cabin with canned goods and other items. The rest of the story about how the gold mine came to the Brunelle estate can be found at http://barneybrunelle.tumblr.com/post/9343838/gold-mine-in-our-dreams. Must reading for any Brunelle interested in family history. By the way, it is not known whether Alvan also purchased those shoes on that trip.

Al Brunelle in the early 1900s in a metal working shop.

Any family history has to take note of tragedy and misfortune, which was a fact of life in those times. In 1896 while Mary Haney was cooking for Union Pacific a deranged man pulled a gun and attempted to murder Mary, and in the process a stray bullet penetrated a wall into the bedroom where fifteen year old daughter Elizabeth was sleeping, killing her.

The Brunelles were not immune. In May of 1904 Every, ten years old at the time, skipped school and with a friend headed up Placer Creek above the family home. While playing on a raft he fell into the frigid water and drowned. About six months later a bereft and grieving fourteen year old brother, Barney, died of a broken heart.

1910

The set up at the Golden Winnie Mine apparently allowed Little Pa to rent out their place on King Street south of downtown Wallace and focus on mine development in partnership with Arrastras, and on his delivery business. Alvan was 23 and also working the mine, having created much good will with those casino winnings years before that helped grubstake the operation. So in 1910 the Brunelle home on Placer Creek was rented and the family was in Murray at the gold mine. A fortuitous place to be on August 20th.

Less is known about Marguerite’s story leading up to 1910. Mary Haney continued to cook for the railroad for some years, but at some point in the decade Mary left that job and the family moved into Wallace. Marguerite was the youngest of the children and struggled with rheumatic fever, keeping her out of school for a couple of years. She boarded at the convent in Uniontown, Washington during the decade (that convent would later move to Cottonwood and establish St. Gertrude’s).

Importantly, the 1910 US Census records show the family living in downtown Wallace in an apartment on Bank Street, one block west of the County Courthouse. Probably not the place to be on August 20th.

Marguerite Haney in the early 1900s when her mother Mary was a cook for Union Pacific.

The summer of 1910 was extraordinarily dry in northern Idaho. An average winter snow was followed by total lack of spring rains, and by summer the forests were very dry. Historians and other writers have documented the 1910 fires and the recent publications help reinforce that there were numerous fires spread across Idaho’s back country from the Salmon River north and well into Montana.

The fledgling US Forest Service did its best to try to keep up with and control some of the blazes. Through the summer they recruited workers, often the down and out, and by August President Taft approved the US military troops be dispatched to the Inland Empire to supplement the fire fighting efforts. There was limited hiring of locals to fight the fire because back then most able-bodied men were busy with mining and support jobs. The Golden Winnie Mine kept the Brunelles fully employed thus no need to join a Forest Service fire crew. This left the Forest Service Rangers with little choice than to rely on recruiting a motley collection of immigrants, roustabouts and others, even emptying the jails in locales like Missoula.

Alvan’s younger sister Jeanette, who was eight years old at the time, recalled a summer of smoke. By mid August things were getting desperate and it was just prior to the Big Blowup on August 20^th that Little Pa took the horse and buggy from the mine near Murray south to Wallace to check on the King Street home and determine whether the family should hold ground at Prichard Creek or move elsewhere.

A 1982 newspaper interview with Jeanette includes the recollection that Little Pa decided the family would stay put – that the Golden Winnie Mine would be their last redoubt, and that if the fires were to get to Wallace the King Street property would likely be in harms way. Little Pa made a wise decision.

Authors like Stephen Pyne whose book Year of the Fires, and most recently Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn capture the drama and detail of the firestorm that blew across the St. Joe country, through the Coeur d’ Alene National Forest and into Montana that fateful weekend in 1910. From this information we can surmise that the Brunelle family made smart choice of staying in the Murray area as the fire blew across the St. Joe divide and down Placer Creek towards Wallace. Little Pa dug a pit and buried the family valuables and pictures. They sank their preserves in a well to protect them in case the fire made it their way.

The fire burned down hill as far as Hord’s Ranch, a mile or so from the Brunelle home on King Street. Somewhere on that slope fire cut off the retreat of Forest Service Ranger Ed Pulaski and forty four men and two horses in his fire crew so they holed up in an eighty foot mine tunnel on the West Fork of Placer Creek to try and survive the fire.

Fire brands blew from the mountains and landed on buildings in Wallace, eventually setting an awning on fire, which spread to several buildings. The eastern third of Wallace burned.

Photographs taken in the fire's aftermath show the Shoshone County Courthouse standing, buildings to the east gone and those to the west still standing. Since the Haney’s place on Bank Street was west of the Courthouse we can conclude their home escaped the fire.

Photo of Wallace after the fire with the burned out east portion of town in the foreground.

Emergency preparations in Wallace included staging several trains for emergency evacuation of town folk. Women and children were ordered to go, men were to stay and fight the fire. We don’t know if Mary and Marguerite boarded an evacuation train, and if so whether east to Missoula or west to Spokane. It’s pretty safe to think they were on one of the trains out of town.

Marguerite probably thought this was no way to celebrate a birthday as she had just turned 20 on August 17^th. Having been delayed in her schooling due to illness, she was getting ready for her senior year at Wallace High School.

After several hours of fire burning through the east side of town the winds settled down. At some point the men in the mine tunnel awoke, at first believing Ranger Pulaski had died along with five other men in the tunnel. Pulaski had in fact survived, and the injured men limped to town. It’s likely they followed the trickle of water in the bottom of the West Fork of Placer Creek, and if so it would have taken them to the main stem of Placer Creek and on to the road (King Street) where they would have passed by the Brunelle home, still standing, on their way into Wallace.

The Pulaski Tunnel is 1.75 up the West Fork of Placer Creek. The Brunelle place was approximately 0.5 miles downstream of the confluence where the West Fork meets the main stem.

The Brunelle home was probably saved by a combination of factors. Some books on the fire mention that back fires had been set above Wallace, but there is little to no detail about what areas were burned out to create a buffer zone around the town. Just as importantly the windstorm that whipped up the fire was headed in a northeasterly direction, which helped spare the west side of Wallace. The winds died down or shifted early on the 21st, which helped. Finally, settlement of the Silver Valley had been in full swing for 30 years and it's likely that the forests surrounding town had been thinned of many trees used for the mines and local buildings. So when the fire blew up and crested into Placer Creek there may have been less forest fuel close to town compared to the back country forests that had not been logged.

AFTER

Other than the 1982 newspaper interview with Jeanette Brunelle Wilks there is little information to go on aside from some family stories passed down. The fire and its calamity was something for people to put behind them and go on with their lives. The Brunelles and Haneys handled it in standard family fashion: no drama or unnecessary heroics; either stay out of town (Brunelle) or get out of town (Haney).

Marguerite graduated from Wallace High School in 1911 at the age of 20 (she was really 21).

Alvan was 24 in the summer of 1911 when he and a boyhood friend -- who had stayed in school eventually attending the University of Idaho – made the long trek to Boise for Alvan’s friend to meet up with fraternity brothers. Nearly fifty years later Alvan recalled his Boise visit, which included a ride on the streetcar to its terminus on Warm Springs Avenue. The group took a swim at the Natatorium. They were at the end of the road on Warm Springs Avenue, and Alvan, likely at the request of Little Pa, made a relatively short half-mile trek over to the Idaho State Penitentiary and paid a visit to Harry Orchard, who was serving a life term for the assassination of Governor Steunenberg. This visit actually has some historic importance because it undermines the conspiracy theory that Harry Orchard was an imposter. Read more here.

And it wasn’t until after Alvan returned to Shoshone County from his Boise trip that he would eventually meet Marguerite. They married in 1915. Little Pa died in 1920. Arrasrtas Smith, who had no relatives, was "adopted" by the Brunelles and when he died in 1929 the Golden Winnie Mine was inherited by widow Jesse and Alvan Brunelle. The mine was renamed the Four Square Mine and was promoted and sold to a Texas oil magnate who probably did not get his investment back.

Jesse purchased lake front property at Lake Pend Oreille with her proceeds and Alvan used some of his to buy a 1936 four door Hudson, send his daughter Loretta to college (the first Brunelle to earn a degree), and quit work for two years. Alvan (1887 - 1962) and Marguerite (1889 - 1959) would move to Woodlawn Park outside of Wallace and raised five kids: Loretta (1916 - 1973), John (1922 and living in Chicago), Thomas (1918 - 1924), Patsy (1926 - 1939), and Alvan (Barney, 1929 and living in Boise). Jessie passed the Brunelle place on King Street to her youngest daughter Jeanette, who lived out her days next to Placer Creek.

[Barney and Beverly Brunelle]

Thanks Andy for bringing to life the story of the 1910 fire and how it affected our family living in the Wallace and Murray area. I often wish I had been more inquisitive about this 60 or 70 years ago. As a follow up I'll add a personal story about me and "Pulaski".

Ed Pulaski became one of the heros of the 1910 Fire but the name is now mostly remembered by the fire fighting tool that bears his name. The tool is basically an ax with a flat grubbing tool on the other end. It has dual use an ax to cut down trees or to use the horizontal feature to excavate a fire line down to mineral soil.

In 1946 I was 17 years old and working at a Forest Service blister rust camp 20 or so miles east of Coeur d' Alene, Idaho, called Camp Lone Cabin. In mid-August a friend and I tendered or resignation to the camp boss, dressed in our go to town clothes and awaited transportation into Coeur d' Alene so we could catch a bus into Spokane to attend a pre-season pro football game between, I think, the Dodgers and the Yankees (somebody should look this up). Our plans were interrupted by a phone call to the camp ordering the crew to a forest fire burning out of control over in the St. Joe National Forest. Our tendered resignation was rendered null and void so it was off with the town clothes and into our spiked boots, pegged pants with wide suspenders and sweat shirts, and onto a bus for the ride to St Maries and up the St. Joe River to Marble Creek. This was followed by a four or five mile hike to the fire. A Forest Service crew had been on the fire lines for several days but a blow-up had burned out their camp so we had come to their aid. This area had been burned over several years before so the standing snags with no roots to speak of were extremely dangerous (referred to as widow-makers).

After arriving near the fire we established a fire camp, was issued a sleeping bag and fire fighting tools. The camp boss (recognizing talent) assigned me the job of a crew chief and directed me to mark a fire line so my crew could excavate this line with shovels and pulaskis. Not needing a shovel I instead obtained a rasp (file) so I could keep the ax part of the pulaski as sharp as a razor. That way I could with one hand blaze trees or cut brush with one short swing so my crew could see where the fire line should go. While performing this task one of the crew assigned to bringing water to workers appeared and asked if I needed a drink. Of course I said yes so the water guy with his five gallon bag on his back handed me a tin cup then backed up so I could depress the spigot to get a drink. As this required the use of both my hands I embedded the grub hoe end of my pulaski into a log with the ax part pointed towards me. I then filled the tin cup and with my left hand lifted it to my lips. Looking down, I noticed a stream of blood dripping off my elbow! The ax was so sharp I never felt it cut a three to four inch long gash in my lower arm. I may have been carrying a first aid kit so I wrapped the wounded arm to stop the bleeding. So now, 64 years later, when I look at my lower left arm, the scar is visible; the mark of Pulaski!

[Nick Brunelle]

I hiked down to Marble Creek a dozen or so years ago with Dennis Fritz and we caught a few small trout. On the trail back up we ran into some N. ID hillbillies with chain saws who were clearing the trail for their motorcycles despite the fact it was an illegal (non-motorized) area. Tea Party I suppose....