Hiking into the fire
The smoke from the fires cleared more than 95 years ago, but it was just last week that the dust settled from building a handsome hiking trail commemorating an epic event in national forest history.
The Pulaski Tunnel Trail begins less than a mile south of downtown Wallace and leads two miles into the legacy of the 1910 forest fires and Ed Pulaski, one of the earliest rangers in the U.S. Forest Service.
Inland Northwest hikers should put the four-mile round trip on their must-do list. The route would be a worthy destination even if it were just another trail.
Fit hikers can handle the trip – with 1,000 feet of elevation gain and loss – in less than two hours. But plan on devoting more time to read the 12 lavish trailside signs and appreciate why Jim See, Ron Roizen and other Silver Valley residents have been putting a hold on their present activities to secure this piece of the past.
See, a guidance counselor for the Mullan School District, sparked the trail project three years ago to draw attention to the site where Pulaski saved most of his firefighting crew as they were caught in the path of horrific fires. District Superintendent Robin Stanley readily adopted See’s enthusiasm and rallied the support of the valley’s movers and shakers. The Shoshone County Commissioners pitched in the startup money.
Idaho Sen. Larry Craig “instantly grasped the historic significance and helped come through with a $300,000 grant,” said Roizen, a retired sociologist who’s helped work out the tangle of logistics.
The story of the 1910 fires and Ed Pulaski has been passed down through the generations, but 2003 seemed to be the perfect timing to launch the campaign to commemorate it appropriately, Roizen said.
“A book was out and Public TV had just released a two-hour documentary, creating a national audience we could use as evidence to the project’s historic stature in our appeals for grants,” See said.
“The trail was an instant best-seller. People were saying, ‘Why didn’t we do this sooner?’ “
“The U.S. Forest Service has done the heavy lifting on this project,” Roizen said, pointing out that the agency “developed the easements, the interpretive signs and it crafted and let the contracts for the trail’s construction.”
Forest Service trail expert Jack Dorrell designed the route and trailbuilders Dwight and Kay Clift of Pinehurst did the work.
“Total costs for the project are in the neighborhood of $600,000,” See said, “but the local Forest Service employees have put in much more than the official dollar figure.”
The trailhead is just a mile south of downtown Wallace on the road to Moon Pass and the St. Joe River. Walking recently from the new parking area and vault toilet to the stunning first bridge over West Fork Placer Creek, See was clearly proud of how it all came together.
“The first few hundred yards are paved and suitable for wheelchairs to come along the creek and see the introductory signs,” he said. “Beyond that, it’s a dirt and rock hiking trail. The terrain leaves no other option.”
The new route generally follows the old West Fork Placer Creek Trail 38. “The Forest Service had designated the trail as a national Historic Escape Route,” Roizen said. “I never knew there was such a thing. I don’t how many there are, but there can’t be many. In this case, the route wasn’t being maintained.”
Indeed, the latest Coeur d’Alene National Forest map, published four years ago, doesn’t even show Trail 38 or the famous mine adit (mine entry passage) where Pulaski sheltered his men from the flames.
“A few locals hiked in here, and I suppose they’re not happy that we’ve opened their hideaway to the public,” said See, who’s walked the route dozens of times to document the construction and show various groups the still-evolving product.
“There are still lots of things we want to do along the trail, including benches and tables, but the trail itself is done.”
And it’s a beauty.
West Fork Placer Creek is the trail’s constant companion. Although some of the creek crossings would be an easy skip and a jump during summer, the five bridges make the trail available to hikers early in the spring when the water rages down the streams in a thunder that can make your heart soar and conversation difficult.
“Every time I come up here it’s different,” See said. “More or less water, greener, browner, flowers and then berries, new animal tracks in the trail.”
After passing a series of flood control gabion dams near the confluence with Placer Creek, the West Fork is a wild stream with numerous small waterfalls and pools.
The trail eventually crosses a steep unvegetated mine dump and passes an exposed piece of ore-car rail and one of the Buffalo blowers that helped ventilate the War Eagle Mine. Here, at the halfway point up the two-mile Pulaski Trail, there’s a side trail heading off a hundred yards or so to the old caved-in mine site.
The trail has steeper sections and passes two more interpretive signs in the last mile to the Pulaski Tunnel site.
The adit is across the creek from the viewpoint that allows hikers to observe where 42 men and two horses went into the adit during the fires, and 38 came out alive.
The hillside has sloughed over the years and the entrance has been gated to prevent entry. But a series of six more signs brings the story to conclusion.
“In the next year we want to clean this area up a little to make it a better place for people to linger and enjoy this,” said See, looking at the blowdowns that in the center of loop the trail makes at the end.
He pointed to an old burned-out stump, a relic of the 1910 fires. “You see a few stumps and snags from the fire on the hike in, but you’ll see a lot more if you continue up the unimproved trail that climbs steeply toward the St. Joe Divide,” he said.
Like silvery silent sentinels, the snags have stood for more than 95 years after the smoke cleared.