Mini Pines - The Big Burn

The Big Burn

In August of 1910, three million acres burned in two days. At least eighty-five people died, and nobody can say exactly how many, because most had been hired off barstools without anyone writing down their names.

Outside Wallace, Idaho, a forest ranger named Ed Pulaski put forty-some men into an abandoned mine shaft and held the door until his body quit.

That’s the part everyone remembers. This one’s about the rest — and about the argument that broke out afterward over what the fire had taught us. We got it wrong, and we’re still paying for it every August.