Jim Kershner’s This day in history » On the Web: spokesman.com/topics/local-history

From our archive, 100 years ago

Searchers from Lewiston found two trappers in their lonely cabin far up Cayuse Creek – and they also found a diary, which told their tragic story.

Clayton Shoecraft and George C. Dorman trekked deep into the Bitterroot Mountains to trap furs over the winter. Some kind of illness or deficiency in their diets – Dorman called it “rheumatism” or “scurvy” in his diary – weakened them dangerously by around mid-February.

On Feb. 21, 1910, Dorman wrote “Do not feel well at all.”

By the beginning of March, he was complaining that “both of us can hardly get around for rheumatism.” On March 18, he wrote, “Pains in my back and legs are fierce. Clay has to crawl.”

On March 24, he wrote, “Clay can’t get out of bed. I feed him in bed, but it is little he eats. He is worse than I am. Oh, this is awful.”

The final entry, on March 29 consisted of one single word: “Worse.”

When they failed to emerge from the mountains in the summer, a party went in search. They were discovered dead in their beds.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1871: British Columbia entered Confederation as a Canadian province. … 1969: Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon after landing their lunar module.