1. Daily Missoulian, 21 August 1910, 1.

2. O. W. Bass to Ruby El Hult, 16 September 1956, box 16, cage 47, Ruby El Hult Papers, Washington State University Archives, Pullman.

3. Idaho Press, 1 September 1910, 6.

4. Joseph P. Fallon to James H. Brady, 23 August 1918, box 7, AR 2/8, Governor James H. Brady Papers, Idaho Historical Society, Boise.

5. For a history of the creation of this self-proclaimed region, see Morrissey, Katherine G., Mental Territories: Mapping the Inland Empire (Ithaca, 1997).Google Scholar

6. Even scholars focusing on refugees tend to overlook refugees prior to World War II. See Bon Tempo, Carl J., Americans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees During the Cold War (Princeton, 2008), 1–18.Google Scholar

7. Spencer, Betty Goodwin, The Big Blowup: The Northwest’s Great Fire (Caldwell, Idaho, 1958)Google Scholar; Hult, Ruby El, Northwest Disaster: Avalanche and Fire (Portland, Ore., 1960)Google Scholar; Cohen, Stan and Miller, Don, The Big Burn: The Northwest’s Forest Fire of 1910 (Missoula, 1978)Google Scholar; Pyne, Stephen J., Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910 (New York, 2001)Google Scholar; Egan, Timothy, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America (Boston, 2009)Google Scholar; Bramwell, Lincoln, “When the Mountains Roared: The 1910 Northern Rockies Fire,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 60, no. 3 (Autumn 2010): 54–69Google Scholar; U.S. Department of Agriculture, When the Mountains Roared: Stories of the 1910 Fire (n.p., 1942)Google Scholar; “Death of a Forest: The Terrible Idaho-Montana Fire of 1910,”Montana: The Magazine of Western History 10, no. 4 (October 1960): 45–58; Marshall, Julian S., “The Idaho Fire of 1910,” The Pacific Northwesterner 7, no. 3 (Summer 1963): 1–10Google Scholar; Rhinehart, Carolyn, “Roaring Forests: The Fires of 1910,” Montana West (Fall 1971): 29–35Google Scholar; Dufresne, Lorraine, A Heritage Remembered: Early and Later Days in the History of Western Sanders County (Thompson Falls, Mont., 1976), 188–90Google Scholar; Crowell, Sandra A. and Asleson, David O., Up the Swiftwater: A Pictorial History of the Colorful Upper St. Joe River Country (n.p.: Museum of North Idaho, 1995), 77–95.Google Scholar

8. Davis, Mike, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York, 1998)Google Scholar; Wyatt, David, Five Fires: Race, Catastrophe, and the Shaping of California (New York, 1997)Google Scholar; Klinenberg, Eric, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (Chicago, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steinberg, Ted, Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (New York, 2000)Google Scholar; Pyne, Stephen J., Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (Princeton, 1982)Google Scholar; Barry, John M., Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (New York, 1997)Google Scholar; Hoffer, Peter Charles, Seven Fires: The Urban Infernos That Reshaped America (New York, 2006)Google Scholar; Winchester, Simon, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 (New York, 2005)Google Scholar; Rozario, Kevin, The Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of Modern America (Chicago, 2007)Google Scholar; Mohr, James C., Plague and Fire: Battling Black Death and the 1900 Burning of Honolulu’s Chinatown (New York, 2005)Google Scholar; May, Peter J., Recovering from Catastrophes: Federal Disaster Relief Policy and Politics (Westport, Conn., 1985)Google Scholar; Platt, Rutherford H., Disasters and Democracy: The Politics of Extreme Natural Events (Washington, D.C., 1999)Google Scholar; Urban, Andrew, “Asylum in the Midst of Chinese Exclusion: Pershing’s Punitive Expedition and the Columbus Refugees from Mexico, 1916–1921,” Journal of Policy History 23, no. 2 (2011): 204–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. See, for example, the 2010 Policy History Conference panel, “Disaster Relief in Historical Perspective,” Columbus, Ohio.

10. Dauber, Michele Landis, “The Sympathetic State,” Law and History Review 23, no. 2 (2005): 387–442CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Landis, Michele L., “Let Me Next Time Be ‘Tried by Fire’: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State 1789–1874,” Northwestern University Law Review 92, no. 3 (1998): 967–1034Google Scholar; Landis, Michele L., “Fate, Responsibility, and ‘Natural’ Disaster Relief: Narrating the American Welfare State,” Law & Society Review 33, no. 2 (1999): 257–318CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dauber, Michele Landis, “The War of 1812, September 11th, and the Politics of Compensation,” DePaul Law Review 53, no. 2 (2003): 289–354.Google Scholar

11. Dauber, “The Sympathetic State,” 394.

12. Landis, “Let Me Next Time Be ‘Tried by Fire,’” 971.

13. Landis, “Fate, Responsibility, and ‘Natural’ Disaster Relief,” 260.

14. Kusmer, Kenneth L., Down and Out, on the Road: The Homeless in American History (New York, 2002), 84–87Google Scholar. For other examples of informal assistance, see Krainz, Thomas A., Delivering Aid: Implementing Progressive Era Welfare in the American West (Albuquerque, 2005), 74–75.Google Scholar

15. For many larger disasters, federal and state assistance helped with caring for refugees. Much of the federal assistance for both the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire was channeled through the army. Sawislak, Karen, Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire, 1871–1874 (Chicago, 1995): 1–119Google Scholar; Smith, Carl, Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman (Chicago, 1995): 1–98Google Scholar; Flanagan, Maureen A., Seeing with Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871–1933 (Princeton, 2002), 13–30Google Scholar; Einhorn, Robin L., Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833–1872 (Chicago, 1991), 231–44Google Scholar; Hoffer, Seven Fires, 106–32; Fradkin, Philip L., The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906: How San Francisco Nearly Destroyed Itself (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005), 164–225Google Scholar; Davies, Andrea Rees, Saving San Francisco: Relief and Recovery After the 1906 Disaster (Philadelphia, 2012)Google Scholar; Russell Sage Foundation, San Francisco Relief Survey: The Organization and Methods of Relief Used After the Earthquake and Fire of April 18, 1906 (New York, 1913).Google Scholar

16. Peter May calculates that Congress only approved 128 acts that either expressed sympathy or provided some financial assistance to victims of disasters from 1803 through 1947. See May, Recovering from Catastrophes, 20.

17. For examples of overarching narratives, see Katz, Michael B., In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York, 1986), 3–250Google Scholar; Patterson, James T., American’s Struggle Against Poverty, 1900–1985 (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 3–98Google Scholar; Trattner, Walter I., From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America (New York, 1974), 75–266Google Scholar; Green, Elna C., This Business of Relief: Confronting Poverty in a Southern City, 1740–1940 (Athens, Ga., 2003), 103–207Google Scholar; For specific programs, see Wood, Sharon E., The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship, and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City (Chapel Hill, 2005)Google Scholar; Krainz, Delivering Aid; Kleinberg, S. J., Widows and Orphans First: The Family Economy and Social Welfare Policy, 1880–1939 (Urbana, Ill., 2006)Google Scholar; Stadum, Beverly, Poor Women and Their Families: Hard Working Charity Cases, 1900–1930 (Albany, N.Y., 1992)Google Scholar; Goodwin, Joanne L., Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform: Mothers’ Pensions in Chicago, 1911–1929 (Chicago, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gordon, Linda, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890–1935 (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Pascoe, Peggy, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–1939 (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Mink, Gwendolyn, The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917–1942 (Ithaca, 1995)Google Scholar; Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992)Google Scholar; Sterett, Susan M., Public Pensions: Gender and Civil Service in the States, 1850–1937 (Ithaca, 2003)Google Scholar; Crenson, Matthew A., Building the Invisible Orphanage: A Prehistory of the American Welfare System (Cambridge, Mass., 1998)Google Scholar; For the development of the social work profession, see Ladd-Taylor, Molly, Mother-Work, Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890–1930 (Urbana, Ill., 1994)Google Scholar; Muncy, Robyn, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935 (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; Agnew, Elizabeth N., From Charity to Social Work: Mary E. Richmond and the Creation of an American Profession (Urbana, Ill., 2004).Google Scholar

18. Michael Katz identifies this blurring of public and private aid as one of the defining structural features of American welfare. See Katz, Michael B., In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York, 1986), 42–46Google Scholar; Katz, Michael B., Improving Poor People: The Welfare State, the “Underclass,” and Urban Schools as History (Princeton, 1995), 25–26Google Scholar. This pattern can be seen in Krainz, Delivering Aid,and Kleinberg, Widows and Orphans First.

19. For information on the weather conditions from winter to summer, see U.S. Department of Agriculture, When the Mountains Roared, 2, and Marshall, “The Idaho Fire of 1910,” 1.

20. Pyne, Year of the Fires, 127–30.

21. Survivors commented that the conflagration was advancing faster than a man could run, and compared this rapid rate to a speeding locomotive. See Coeur d’Alene Evening Press, 23 August 1910, 4.

22. William J. Smith to Ruby El Hult, 15 August 1956, 1, box 16, cage 47, Ruby El Hult Papers, Washington State University Archives, Pullman.

23. Hult, Northwest Disaster, 136–40.

24. According to the Spokesman-Review, 23 August 1910, 2, “The population of Wallace has been swelled by large numbers of people from Mullan and other canyon towns. The hotels are packed and every eating place is rushed to death.” Homesteaders fled into Libby and Troy, Montana; see Western News, 25 August 1910, 1.

25. Sanders County Ledger, 26 August 1910, 2.

26. For a list of the dead, see Spencer, Big Blowup, 216–26. For acres burned, see Egan, Big Burn, 230.

27. Pyne, Year of the Fire, 199.

28. The relief patterns associated with Missoula hold true in Washington for Tekoa and Newport; and in Idaho for Sandpoint, Wallace, Coeur d’Alene, Cabinet, Kellogg, and Wardner. The historical records on these towns’ responses are far more fragmented than for Missoula.

29. Daily Missoulian, 22 August 1910, 10.

30. O. W. Bass to Ruby El Hult, 16 September 1956, box 16, cage 47, Ruby El Hult Papers, Washington State University Archives, Pullman; Idaho Press, 1 September 1910, 6.

31. Daily Missoulian, 21 August 1910, 1; 22 August 1910, 10.

32. Daily Missoulian, 22 August 1910, 10.

33. Idaho Press, 1 September 1910, 6; O. W. Bass to Ruby El Hult, 16 September 1956, box 16, cage 47, Ruby El Hult Papers, Washington State University Archives, Pullman; Daily Missoulian, 22 August 1910, 10. Graffenberger’s name also appears as Graffenberg and Graffenburg.

34. Daily Missoulian, 22 August 1910, 2 and 10.

35. Daily Missoulian, 28 August 1910, 2.

36. Daily Missoulian, 24 August 1910, 2 and 10; 26 August 1910, 10; 27 August 1910, 10; 28 August 1910, 3.

37. Information on Boyd can be found in the Idaho Press, 25 August 1910, 3. Information on Sergler can be found in the Spokesman-Review, 23 August 1910, 1.

38. Daily Missoulian, 26 August 1910, 10.

39. Quotations, Missoula Herald, 22 August 1910, 3; Daily Missoulian, 23 August 1910, 12.

40. Daily Missoulian, 23 August 1910, 12. The Missoula Herald reported that the dining room was donated and furnished with cots and bedding to accommodate one hundred people; however, no other source mentions these cots and bedding. See the Missoula Herald, 22 August 1910, 1.

41. Daily Missoulian, 23 August 1910, 1.

42. Ibid., 4.

43. Idaho Press, 1 September 1910, 6.

44. This trend of raising funds was not unique to the Inland Empire; other communities suffering from a natural disaster used similar methods. See Pyne, Fire in America, 209–10.

45. Daily Missoulian, 23 August 1910, 12; 24 August 1910, 10; 26 August 1910, 10; 27 August 1910, 10; 28 August 1910, 3. Immediately following the dance, there was some question about how and by whom the money would be distributed. See Daily Missoulian, 27 August 1910, 10. The Missoula Band played an extended open-air concert to raise funds and Captain Knapp of the Salvation Army invited any refugees in need of clothing to visit him. See Daily Missoulian, 24 August 1910, 10; Missoula Herald, 24 August 1910, 2; 22 August 1910, 2.

46. Daily Missoulian, 23 August 1910, 12.

47. Daily Missoulian, 23 August 1910, 2; 24 August 1910, 10; and 25 August 1910, 3.

48. Quotation, Daily Missoulian, 28 August 1910, 6. Daily Missoulian, 23 August 1910, 2; 25 August 1910, 3. Missoula Herald, 26 August 1910, 2.

49. Daily Missoulian, 23 August 1910, 7.

50. Idaho Press, 1 September 1910, 2.

51. Daily Missoulian, 28 August 1910, 2.

52. Missoula Herald, 23 August 1910, 2.

53. Daily Missoulian, 24 August 1910, 2.

54. Missoula Herald, 22 August 1910, 3.

55. Missoula Herald, 24 August 1910, 2.

56. Missoula Herald, 24 August 1910, 3. See also Harry Sanson, Oral History 55–5, University of Montana Archives, Missoula.

57. Daily Missoulian, 27 August 1910, 10.

58. Ibid.

59. Daily Missoulian, 26 August 1910, 2.

60. Daily Missoulian, 27 August 1910, 10.

61. Krainz, Delivering Aid.

62. Daily Missoulian, 13 September 1910, 10.

63. Spokane Daily Chronicle, 22 August 1910, 8.

64. Following the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, the city of Santa Paula, California, decided not to take in any refugees. See Fradkin, The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906, 180.

65. Spokesman-Review, 22 August 1910, 7; Inland Herald, 22 August 1910, 2. Spokane Daily Chronicle, 25 August 1910, 8.

66. Andrews, Ralph W., Historic Fires of the West (Seattle, 1966), 80–84.Google Scholar

67. Morrissey, Mental Territories, 43–52. At the time of the 1889 fire, Spokane was known as Spokane Falls.

68. Inland Herald, 21 August 1910, 1.

69. Spokane Daily Chronicle, 22 August 1910, 3.

70. Inland Herald, 22 August 1910, 3

71. Spokane Press, 23 August 1910, 2. At the time, hotels seemed to be the only lodging option for refugees. The Spokesman-Review, 23 August 1910, 7, lists which refugees were staying in which hotels. None are listed as staying in private homes.

72. Spokane Press, 23 August 1910, 1.

73. Spokesman-Review, 23 August 1910, 7.

74. Spokane Press, 24 August 1910, 2.

75. Spokane Chronicle, 23 August 1910, 2.

76. In addition to Wallace, a number of other communities needed food. In Idaho, the communities of Cabinet, Sagle, and Westmond all received food shipments from the Sandpoint, Idaho, relief committee. A baker in Potlatch, Idaho, set 300 loaves of bread and 1,000 buns to Newport, Washington. In Montana, the settlements of Borax, Saltese, and DeBorgia all ran short of food. See, Daily Missoulian, 24 August 1910, 6; Missoula Herald, 25 August 1910, 2; Joseph A. Mayo, “Forest Fire of 1910 Destroyed Miles of Valuable Timber; Story Retold by Refugee,” Mineral Independent, December 1933, 12; Spokane Daily Chronicle, 22 August 1910, 2; 26 August 1910, 2; Spokesman-Review, 30 August 1910, 2; Northern Idaho News, 30 August 1910, 1; Pend D’Oreille Review, 2 September 1910, 4.

77. Inland Herald, 24 August 1910, 8.

78. Industrial Worker, 13 August 1910, 1.

79. Quotations in Inland Herald, 24 August 1910, 8. See also Spokane Daily Chronicle, 23 August 1910, 7; Spokesman-Review, 24 August 1910, 7.

80. Inland Herald, 24 August 1910, 7.

81. Quotation, Spokesman-Review, 26 August 1910, 2. See also Spokane Daily Chronicle, 26 August 1910, 25.

82. The Spokesman-Review, 23 August 1910, 7, reports that “many who came to town on Saturday and Sunday returned.”

83. Daily Missoulian, 2 September 1910, 2. Others complained of treatment in Spokane. See Spokesman-Review, 24 August 1910, 3; 25 August 1910, 9; and 27 August 1910, 7.

84. Quotations from Spokane Daily Chronicle, 27 August 1910, 1. See also Spokane Daily Chronicle, 27 August 1910, 8; and Idaho Press, 1 September 1910, 4. The Idaho Press claimed that Barrett was eighty-eight years old.

85. Krainz, Delivering Aid, 31–145.

86. Spokesman-Review, 30 August 1910, 7; 31 August 1910, 7; 2 September 1910, 7.

87. Daily Missoulian, 27 August 1910, 10.

88. Missoula Herald, 13 September 1910, 2.

89. Spokane Daily Chronicle, 25 August 1910, 3. See also 26 August 1910, 2.

90. Inland Herald, 3 September 1910, 9; Daily Missoulian, 25 August 1910, 3. Spokane did donated $1,000 to Wallace’s relief efforts. It is unclear if the money sent to Wallace is included in Spokane’s grand total. See Daily Press-Times, 5 March 1911, 5.

91. Daily Missoulian, 28 August 1910, 2.

92. Western News, 25 August 1910, 1.

93. Idaho Daily Statesman, 29 August 1910, 3.

94. Stevens County Commissioner’s Journal, vol. F, 190, 193, 228, 292, and 339, Stevens County Courthouse, Colville, Washington. Kootenai County Commissioners Record, vol. F, 592; vol. G, 6, Kootenai County Courthouse, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Shoshone County Commissioners’ Journal, vol. G, 227, Shoshone County Courthouse, Wallace, Idaho. Although the Northern Pacific did grant free transportation to many, if not most, refugees to return home, this offer did not cover all transportation expenses. Thus some counties purchased train fares for refugees to return home. The idea for tax relief seemed first to surface in Wallace. See the Idaho Press, 25 August 1910, 3. Shoshone County Commissioners’ Journal, vol. G, 204, 237, and 260. Idaho law did exempt the property of resident widows, divorced women, and orphan children from taxes if valued at less than $1,000. See General Laws of the State of Idaho Passed at the Seventh Session of the State Legislature (Boise, 1903), 73. Kootenai County Commissioners Record, vol. G, 16. Lincoln County Record of Commissioners Proceedings, vol. 1, 122, Lincoln County Courthouse, Libby, Montana. Christopher Howard has examined how tax expenditures have played a key part in post–World War II social policy. The examples here of cancellation of property taxes raise an interesting instance of tax policy being used as social policy during the early twentieth century. See Howard, Christopher, The Hidden Welfare State: Tax Expenditures and Social Policy in the United States (Princeton, 1997).Google Scholar

95. Spokane City Council Minutes, vol. S, 26 August 1910, 71–72, Washington State Archives, Eastern Regional Archives, Cheney, Washington; Spokesman-Review, 27 August 1910, 7.

96. Spokesman-Review, 30 August 1910, 7.

97. Spokesman-Review, 25 August 1910, 3.

98. Newport Miner, 1 September 1910, 1. The tents were previously loaned to residents of Fernie, British Columbia, after a fire destroyed most of that town in 1908, and the expectation was that the tents would be returned to Spokane’s Chamber of Commerce after homeless ranchers established more permanent shelters.

99. Spokane Daily Chronicle, 25 August 1910, 3.

100. Spokane Daily Chronicle, 24 August 1910, 3.

101. Spokane Chronicle, 23 August 1910, 3. See also Naomi Boll Parker, Oral History, OH 270, p. 5, Idaho Historical Society, Boise.

102. Daily Idaho Press, 26 September 1910, 1.

103. May, Recovering from Catastrophes, 17–47; Rozario, Culture of Calamity, 150–55 and 171; and Steinberg, Acts of God, 174–78.