SPOKANE, Wash. -- Wednesday marks the 115th anniversary of The Great 1910 Fire, "The Big Burn", the largest forest fire in American history.

The fire burned 3 million acres of timber in Washington, Idaho, and Montana. 87 people lost their lives, and the survivors were forever changed by what they lived through.

A combination of drought, lightning storms, and cinders from railroad locomotives ignited thousands of small wildfires from Western Montana across Idaho and into Northeast Washington that summer. The weather provided the final blow on August 20, when winds howled out of Eastern Washington at over 70 miles per hour, merging the small fires into several massive firestorms.

The Coeur d'Alene mining district, what we call Shoshone County today, was hit especially hard. One-third of t

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