This day in history: Two huckleberry pickers were missing from the woods near Priest Lake

From 1975: The search was on for two huckleberry pickers, age 82 and 52, who disappeared on the side of Mt. Gleason in the Priest Lake area.

The husband of one of the women said he dropped them off in the afternoon and came back to pick them up just before dusk. They were nowhere to be found.

The area was covered with dense vegetation. Heavy rains and high winds swept the forest later that evening.

The search was particularly urgent because one of the women was said to have a heart condition.

They were missing in the same area where high school cross country runner Steve “Buzz” Martin disappeared a week earlier. The search for him had been called off.

From 1925: Spokane’s McGoldrick Lumber Company was building a new logging railroad “to tap one of the largest areas of yellow (Ponderosa) pine timber in the world,” in the Hangman Creek district near Tekoa.

The 15-mile railroad “leads from the Idaho line into the Hangman Creek district into the heart of 200,000,000 feet of yellow pine.”

“The land is unusually good farming land and once logged off will raise good crops, agriculturists say,” The Spokesman-Review reported.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1305: Scottish patriot William Wallace is executed for high treason by Edward I of England in London.

1939: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree to the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact and secretly divide Poland between themselves, setting the stage for World War II.