The Red Scourge

Around 3 o'clock in the morning, A.J. Breitenstein awoke to his phone ringing.

The sky loomed outside his bedroom window in the color of old rose, and an odor like campfire lingered in the wind. An editor from the Missoulian called to tell Breitenstein that a train of refugees was chugging into Montana from Western Idaho with a hurricane of fire chasing it down. The train would arrive in Missoula within hours. Breitenstein hung up the phone and dressed quickly. As secretary for the Missoula Chamber of Commerce, he arrived at his office within 30 minutes, tasked with assembling a relief effort for what would later be called the Big Burn of 1910.

Six hours prior to Breitenstein's alarm, the drought-stricken trees surrounding Wallace, Idaho, carried crowns of fire down from the mountains. The woods of Idaho and Montana had been sick with fire thatsummer, like a bad case of scarlet fever. Then, on Aug. 20, a godly wind corralled the smaller fires into one another so that by the following evening, one massive sweep of flames set on a course to burn a 3 million-acre hole through every forest and town in its path.

"You never saw anything like it," recounted W.H. Barnett, from Wallace, to reporters for the Missoulian. "The fire came up Placer Creek, south of town, and crossed a heavily-timbered ridge more than 1,000 feet above the streets. A regular gale was behind it when it hit the crest of the hill, and sparks flew several hundred yards ahead of it.

"This was 9 o'clock and the business portion of the town was crowded with people. No one dreamed that we were in real danger."

Razing Wallace

Wallace, a town of 6,000 at the time and the financial, and agricultural epicenter of the region, sat in a cup-shaped basin with mining towns dotting the higher gulches and mountains surrounding. Cautious designers had attempted to "fireproof" the town's buildings using steel and brick after a previous fire had burned wooden homes and businessesto the ground. 

But nothing could withstand the brutal force of this new inferno. Invading from the east side of town, it licked up the Wallace Times building first. Next, Worstell's furniture store and the Coeur d'Alene hardware store fell as the fire easily seized the entire business district.

Blinding, choking-hot smoke poured through the streets. Red-hot firebrands as big as baseball mitts rained onto the town. Everyone was ordered to evacuate. Some stubborn people stood with garden hoses on their front yards.

Through the confusion, Fred Anderson and his wife struck a lucky mode of escape. On the Northern Pacific Railway tracks, Conductor "Kid" Brown's engine and caboose waited. People packed into the boxcar. The Sisters of the Catholic hospital loaded patients and nurses onto the train. Men climbed on top when the caboose filled up and clung from the tender or any other place that could hold them. One man hauled into town with his horse. With a tear in his eye, he patted his steed's muzzle, kissed him goodbye and boarded the train.

Between 9:30 and 10 p.m., the train could wait no longer. It built steam, set motion and charged away from Wallace.    

A call to arms

Operators for the Milwaukee Road and Northern Pacific were receiving telegraph and telephone communications as updates of the events streamed into Missoula, which was, and still is, the regional headquarters for the US Forest Service. 

At only five years of age, the Forest Service had the barest notion of an agency objective other than to free the forests from private interests. Montana and Idaho were still vast wildernesses without many establised fire access trails. 

The town of Missoula, on the other hand, had a distinct social order. Fraternal organizations and churches were prominent in the community, and even the mundane facets of life weaved a tightly-knit social fabric. The Daily Missoulian, as it was known, published occurrences of visitors to town, community gossip, or brunch party announcements in their "Local Brevities" section. "A.E. Walsh of Stevensville spent Sunday in Missoula visiting with friends," reads one announcement. "C.C. Perry, bookkeeper at the Scandinavian-American Bank, and Engineer Vacain of the Northern Pacific, will spend Sunday on Rock Creek fishing," reads another. 

In the forests, "All hell broke loose," chief forester W.B. Greeley reported, but in the early hours of the Big Blowup, the city of Missoula and its lucid lines of communication coalesced behind a singular call for help.

Breitenstein arranged for a hot breakfast to be served by Charlie Schrage of the Grand Pacific Hotel. He established a general headquarters for the relief committee in the upstairs rooms of a building on Front Street. Money, donations and supplies were collected and distributed from there. 

Managers of the Florence Hotel on Front Street donated serving tables. Mrs. F.S. Lusk sent dozens of fresh eggs. In the dark hours before the sun rose above Mount Sentinel on Sunday, Aug. 21, Schrage and warehouse manager of the Missoula Mercantile, Tyler B. Thompson, sped through the streets of town. They arrived at a warehouse and loaded their car with ham and breakfast meat for the refugees. 

With word spreading fast, donations began piling in. John R. Toole met with Breitenstein and handed him a hefty $50. After Toole, a guest of the Shapard hotel donated a $5 bill, saying another $5 could be cajoled if needed. But even though Breitenstein could orchestrate these efforts on the fringe of this great disaster, he had no idea how many refugees would arrive, or in what condition.

Fly-by-night train

When the train of refugees pulled into Mullan, Idaho, not a breath of relief filled their fragile lungs. Instead, the wind gushed smoke from the west. Backed with the force of a tornado and now generating its own weather system, the fire ripped through the forests as Kid Brown hooked another boxcar onto his locomotive. Brown's train did not stay in Mullan long before the main fire caught up with it.