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Stories from the Pulaski Project

The Big Blowup of 1910 produced heroines as well as heroes
Photo of Burke women who walked to Thompson to escape fire speaks volumes

BY RON ROIZEN & JIM SEE
two women


This photograph (above) appeared on page 9 of the Spokesman-Review on August 25, 1910, five days after the firestorm known as the Big Blowup swept mercilessly through northern Idaho and western Montana.

The two women in the photo seem to be looking directly at us, as if, serenely and with satisfaction, to memorialize their heroic ordeal.

Both women, Mrs. Henry Henderling and Miss Lillian Dube, were residents of Burke, Idaho; they were cousins. 

According to the Spokesman's account, at 11pm Saturday night, Aug. 20th, word reached them that "the town was sure to burn."

They "immediately gathered up a little food, took what clothes we are wearing and with the children started out on the tramp across the mountains." 

Mrs. Henderling brought her two children, aged two and three years.  Miss Dube, age 20, traveled with her siblings, Emma, age 18; Philip, 23; and Arthur, 19.

Their account of the trek was brief and plainspoken:

"The boys did not know the way, but as we were leaving Burke we ran across another party in which was a man who knew the mountains well, and he acted as a guide.  We got well up on the mountains and stayed for the night, and spent all day Sunday walking at intervals and spent Sunday night in a cabin near the Arlington prospector mine, which burned shortly after we left Monday morning.  We arrived at Montana Standard at 12 o'clock and were met there by rigs which another party which had outdistanced us, owing to the children having to be carried, had sent back for us from Thompson.  We arrived in Thompson at 5 o'clock Monday and Mayor Hoglan took us to his home, gave us supper and kept us until Tuesday afternoon, when we boarded a Northern Pacific train for Spokane."

We checked the North Idaho telephone directory for possible descendants of the two women.

There is no listing for a "Henderling."

But the "Dube" name lead to Mr. Arthur Dube, Jr. of Hayden Lake.  Lillian Dube, on the right in the photo, was his aunt.  Lillian's brother, Arthur, who is mentioned in the escape account, was his father.

"My father wore a coat when the little party left for Thompson," Arthur said.  "Others in the group chided him for that because it was mid-summer, my father told me, but the coat proved to be useful when the night turned cold."

Lillian was no stranger to suffering and hardship.  Her father, John Baptist Dube, a Frenchman or French Canadian, had come out to the Coeur d'Alene mining district from Wisconsin -- he was attracted, said Arthur, by "the huge salaries."  He built a small house by the high school before calling for his wife and children to follow him to Burke.  John Baptist and his wife Celine had five children, three boys and two girls.  Sadly, Celine and the children were in Burke only two or three months when John Baptist was killed by a "short fuse" blast in the Tiger-Poorman mine on July 1st, 1900.  He was 46 years old.

Celine took in laundry to support herself and her family.  She married a second time, to a man named Maurice Lajeunnesse.  Once again, however, tragedy struck Lillian's family.  Celine was rushed by train to Spokane for an emergency appendectomy, but died of blood poisoning.  The gravestone in her gated grave site at Nine Mile Cemetery gives December 15, 1904 as the date she passed away.

Lillian must have married relatively soon after the Big Blowup in 1910.  She married a mine carpenter named Thomas Shields.  They had four children, from oldest to youngest:  Margaret, Lewis, Albert, and Rita.  Only Rita still lives, in Malta, Montana. 

Lillian's husband, Tom, died in Moscow, Idaho in 1939.  Lillian, who would have been about 50 when Tom died, worked for a time at the Beanery in Burke.  In 1942 or thereabouts, however, she moved to Spokane.   She moved into what Arthur Dube described as "a nice little house" near what would later become Gonzaga University's music hall.  Lillian did custodial work at the hall. 

Lillian Shields is buried at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Spokane County.  She passed away on February 16, 1968 at the age of 79.

But Lillian's family line has not left the Silver Valley entirely.

Jim Shields, Sheriff's Department dispatcher and volunteer firefighter -- and Lillian's grandson -- lives in Wallace with his wife Rema. 

The two brave women, Henderling and Dube, offered a final comment about their harrowing ordeal in the Spokesman article:  "We were treated nicely everywhere," they said.

-- We thank Reference Librarian Dennis Bergstrom and the Spokane Public Library for their generous assistance.  Ron Roizen and Jim See are members of the Pulaski Project, which group has partnered with the U.S. Forest Service to save the mine and trail where Big Ed Pulaski's heroic rescue of his crew was carried out in August, 1910.  The public is cordially invited to the dedication ceremony for the Pulaski Tunnel Trail at the trailhead a half mile south of Wallace at 1 p.m. on Saturday, August 20, 2005 -- please contact ron@roizen.com for more info.