Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Sen. Weldon Brinton Heyburn, of Wallace – whose name lives on in Heyburn State Park on Lake Coeur d’Alene – died at age 60 on Oct. 17, 1912.

He succumbed to a “complication of diseases involving the heart and kidneys” at his apartment in Washington, D.C. 

“He had not been well since last March, when he collapsed after delivering a speech in the Senate on arbitration treaties,” said the paper.

He was known for his “wide range of information, fine memory and readiness of speech,” yet he was also known for his pugnacious attitude. He was “a man of strong convictions, frankly and readily expressed on all occasions.” He was known especially for his “unyielding bitterness toward the South and frequent denunciations of Southern civil war leaders.”

He was also known for his opposition to Teddy Roosevelt’s “conservation ideas.”

Following the 1910 Big Burn, which devastated the region around his hometown, he declared that it was the result of Roosevelt’s national forest service. The fires would never have occurred under private ownership, he said, because the forests would already have been logged and cleared.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1867: The United States took formal possession of Alaska from Russia.