On August 19th 1910, an assistant forest ranger named Edmund Pulaski emerged out of the smoked filled Bitterroot Mountains, that loomed over the town of Wallace, Idaho. For months himself and his crew has been fighting wild fires in the Bitterroot’s but despite all of their efforts he was afraid that the town was going to burn.

Pulaski’s worst fears came true the very next day when the town of Wallace went a blaze, people desperately scrammed to round up their belongings whilst women and children where put on the last train out of town. The roar of the wind and flames was overwhelming, the air so hot it was hard to breathe, it was the biggest wild fire to ever hit the Northern Rockies.

Coined “The Big Burn”, the fire destroyed an area the size of Connecticut in a mere 36 hours, it was the first of its kind, killing 87 people, most of whom were firefighters.