This day in history: Coeur d’Alene Tribe said state violated 1908 agreement over Heyburn land. Drunken hay wagon driver threatened neighbor after crash

From 1975: The fate of Heyburn State Park at the south end of Lake Coeur d’Alene was still in the balance.

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe had been urging the federal government to reclaim the land from the state of Idaho, on the grounds that the state had illegally granted 10-year leases for private cottages around Lake Chatcolet in the park, the Associated Press reported in an article that ran in The Spokesman-Review. Under the terms of a 1908 contract, the land was granted to Idaho only for public recreation. The contract stipulated that the land would be returned to the federal government if it was used for any other purpose.

Tribal officials also maintained that the state had “allowed the lake to become badly polluted through overuse.”

The Idaho attorney general sent off an 18-page rebuttal, saying that only 20 acres of the 6,700 acre park was used for private leases.

He said if the land reverted to the federal government, to be held in trust for the tribe, “there will be no more park.”

The Department of Interior would be the final arbiter of the issue.

From 1925: Frank Miller, alias Frank Wroblewski, was in jail after he went on a wild, drunken ride – in a hay wagon.

Miller was careening down a road north of Dartford when he lost control of his team and crashed, full-tilt, over an embankment.

Charles Hammond, who lived nearby, rushed to his assistance.

“When I approached, he drew a gun, pointed it at me, and snapped the trigger,” Hammond told police.

Officers arrived and found Miller in possession of a pint of moonshine and a revolver containing six shells, all of them empty. That was fortunate because police believed Hammond might have been murdered if the gun had contained a live cartridge.