Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

The son of a former county prosecutor and another teenage boy were arrested on suspicion of auto theft when a police officer saw the boys cruising in a seven-passenger Buick. He stopped the boys and asked them who owned the auto. They told him the auto belonged to an uncle. But the officer recognized it as an auto stolen weeks earlier from a local doctor.

The boys soon confessed to having stolen the car. They kept it in “garages connected with vacant homes.” They had driven it 1,100 miles since then, and one of them even took his mother for a ride in it. They ran the radiator almost dry, but apparently the auto was not damaged.

The former county prosecutor said he had been out of town for weeks and had no idea that his son had been joy-riding.

The officer collected a $100 reward.

From the mining beat: The Spokesman-Review commemorated what it said was the 50th anniversary of the discovery of gold in the Coeur d’Alenes. This 1865 strike produced some excitement and a number of eager prospectors, but most of the gold seekers soon withdrew in disappointment.

The editorial noted that these early prospectors failed to note the area’s copious galena deposits, which would later produce “hundreds of millions of dollars of new wealth” in silver and lead.