100 years ago in the Inland Northwest: An underground mine fire raged, and a ‘well-preserved’ body was discovered months after a man died in a snowstorm

A special “rescue car” from Butte was on the way to the Hercules Mine near Burke, Idaho, to help extinguish a fire 400 feet below the surface.

All miners were safely evacuated within 30 minutes of the alarm. Soon after that, rescue crews from the nearby mines – Hecla, Morning and Tamarack – arrived to help.

About 30 “helmet men” had been fighting the fire all night and through the next morning, but it was not under control.

From the fatality beat: The body of Peter Chatwain, an aged member of the Flathead Tribe, was found under a melting snowdrift along the Milwaukee Road right-of-way.

Authorities believed he was a victim of a fierce December snowstorm. They surmised he disembarked from the train and started toward his home 4 miles away.

“He evidently became bewildered in the storm and laid down beside a log,” a surgeon who examined the body said.

His body was hidden under the snow for months and was “well-preserved,” the doctor said.

From the Cannon Hill beat: Residents of the Cannon Hill neighborhood renewed their vehement protests against plans to put the city’s new Florence Crittenton Home (for unwed mothers) there.

The chairman of a neighborhood committee claimed the home would cause their property values to plummet, and that “the morals of the children of the district would be endangered.”

The committee threatened to file a lawsuit.

L.W. Hutton, on the board of the Crittenton institution, “advanced answers to each of the shots from the committee.” But he was “outnumbered 5-1” by angry residents.