WALLACE - While many of the roughly 4,000 residents of this city on Aug. 20, 1910, were fleeing east and west as the waves of a firestorm burned down the steep hillsides, "Big Ed" Pulaski did everything he could to get back here.

Because of the smoke, city street lights were turned on before 3 p.m. Fire was visible on the ridges surrounding the city. Many people were burying possessions they wouldn't be able to take with them as they hurriedly left for safety.

It had been an extremely hot and dry year. It had warmed up early in February and March, with almost no rain. April was hot, too, with temperatures in the 80s, said John Amonson, former director of the Wallace District Mining Museum.

By that summer, heat lightning began to strike mountainsides, starting numerous wildfires, Amonson said. There was no rain in July.

Jim McReynolds, the current museum director, said nearly a third of Wallace would burn before it was all over. Twenty years earlier in Wallace, in July 1890, most of the structures in downtown Wallace were burned after a fire started in a hotel.

Many of the buildings in town were wood structures then, and after the 1890 fire most were replaced with masonry construction.

In 1910, "Everything east of Seventh Street, with the exception of Providence Hospital was burned," McReynolds said.

The Wallace Times building, located on the 700 block of Bank Street, was the first to light, he said. Burning tree branches and other debris fell from the sky, starting the fire.

Everything that burned, did so in a two-hour period on the night of the 20th, he said.

About 100 buildings, including homes and commercial structures, would be destroyed. The damage total was said to be $1 million at the time.

One man died trying to save a pet bird. Another man died in the Coeur d'Alene Hotel, McReynolds said.

While Wallace was partially spared, the town of Grand Forks, south of Mullan, was completely burned. Mullan was barely saved by residents who started backburns.

Seven miles away from Wallace, by trail, up on the Big Creek Divide, Pulaski was losing his voice hollering to round up his crew amidst the fire noise and gale-force winds, said James See, president of the Pulaski Project, which works to preserve the Pulaski Tunnel Trail. The trailhead is about a mile south of Wallace, and leads to one of the most historic sites of the 1910 Fires.

Pulaski planned to round up his crews on the divide and head back to Wallace, See said. Pulaski knew they couldn't hold back the fires headed for them from the south.

He and 45 men headed past Lake Elsie and on toward the West Fork of Placer Creek. On the way down one of the men died, possibly killed by one of the trees that fell in the winds and fire or lagged behind and was caught by flames, See said.

His men were panic stricken.

"Trees were exploding like Roman candles," See said. "They were in hell."

Once to the West Fork of Placer Creek, the men would head toward Placer Creek and follow the trail there to Wallace, along what is Moon Pass Road today.

On the way down the West Fork, with a bear following them down the trail, they could see fire headed up toward them. They were boxed in.

"The citizens of Wallace might have set a backfire," See said. "The crew was freaking out. The sound of the fire is roaring and smoke is choking" them.

With Wallace blocked by a monster wall of flames, they decided to seek safety in the War Eagle adit, a mining term meaning portal. They quickly found they wouldn't be able to reach the War Eagle because of the flames - it was just too far down the ravine.

They settled for Nicholson adit, which was about four miles from Lake Elsie.

Nicholson adit was an exploratory hole in the mountain. Miners had likely been looking for galena ore.

See said the hole goes about 200 feet into the mountain.

"You can stand up and walk, and it's about two people wide," See said.

Fortunately for the crew, Edward C. Pulaski was a miner, blacksmith, and forest ranger.

"He knew the whole area, and knew it well," Amonson said.

Jason Kirchner, a spokesman for the Idaho Panhandle National Forests, said, "The man knew the woods. He knew exactly what he was looking for and what was back there."

Still it was difficult to see through the dark smoke, and the flames sounded like jet engines screaming around them. The heat was like a giant furnace.

After not being able to reach War Eagle, they headed back up toward Nicholson. They would make it just in time.

See said it was probably late afternoon or evening when the men reached Nicholson, which is about 15 feet from the stream.

With the men in the adit, along with two horses, Pulaski tried to keep the flames and smoke out with blankets and water from inside. Fire reached the tunnel just as they made it inside.

Heat, smoke, and gas from the fire was too much for many of the men, who fell unconscious. He'd ordered the men to lie face down.

When someone decided to run from the cave, Pulaski pulled out his pistol and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to leave.

"He literally saves their lives by threatening to kill them," said McReynolds. "It's such a great human interest story."

See said the first men emerged from the cave in the early morning hours of Aug. 21. The rocks and ground outside the cave were too hot, so the men went into the now warm creek. The trees looked like they had been mowed down.

Five men who reached the cave had died overnight. Of the 45 men he started with, 39 survived the ordeal. Both horses died. The men were burned and injured, their clothes and shoes were burned and torn, and they were covered in mud and ashes.

Some could no longer walk, and had to crawl part of the three miles to Wallace on their hands and knees.

The fire had ravaged Pulaski's eyes, lungs and throat. They would cause him problems for years afterward.

The Forest Service was very lightly manned at that time, said Amonson.

"They were literally taking people off the street who were willing to fight the fire," Amonson said.

Pulaski himself had just begun working for the Forest Service in 1908, as a forest ranger on the Coeur d'Alene National Forest. He retired from the Forest Service in 1930. He died in 1931, and is buried in Coeur d'Alene at Forest Cemetery.

While serving as a district ranger, Pulaski developed a combination ax and grubbing hoe tool. This has since been accepted as the standard firefighting tool of the Forest Service. In his honor, the tool carries his name, Pulaski. The original Pulaski Tool is at the Wallace District Mining Museum.

Following the 1910 Fires, forestry officials established a policy of 100 percent suppression toward wildfire. The irony is that policy has created a threat of more catastrophic fires because of the build-up of fuels.

More scientific research into wildfires also was driven by the fires.

The Forest Service itself says the catastrophe in its early, fledgling years was its "trial by fire."