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

From our archives, 100 years ago

The burned-out forests of North Idaho – devastated in the Great Fire of 1910 – were proving to be more salvageable than originally thought.

A forester from Missoula did a survey of the dead, standing wood, and found it to be in surprisingly good shape. Most of it would be harvestable for several more years.

Why?

Because the fire stripped all of the bark off the trees, “leaving no place for eggs of the wood-destroying insects to hatch.”

From the famous architect beat: One Spokane architect came to the defense of a fellow architect in the pages of The Spokesman-Review. He defended Julius Zittel, who had been criticized for charging a 5 percent fee for designing the new City Hall.

“The five percent asked by Mr. Zittel is very fair and reasonable,” said the architect. “A five percent commission is lower by one percent than is asked by the American Institute of Architects.”

These were the words of “Kirk K. Cutter,” known to posterity as Kirtland Cutter, the most famous architect to come out of Spokane and one of the most famous in the West.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1983: Astronaut Sally K. Ride became America’s first woman in space, aboard the space shuttle Challenger.