We named one of our coffees Big Ed. If you're new here and wondering why a bag of Medium roast carries a man's name, this is the story.
August 20, 1910. Wallace, Idaho.
The summer of 1910 was the driest anyone in the northern Rockies could remember. Fires had been burning across Idaho and Montana for months, hundreds of them, small and large, running through timber that hadn't seen rain in weeks. The Forest Service, which had only existed for five years, had men spread across the mountains doing what they could.
Ed Pulaski was one of them. U.S. Forest Service Ranger, based out of Wallace, Idaho. Forty-four years old. Former miner, ranch hand, blacksmith. A man who knew the country.
On August 20th, hurricane-force winds hit the panhandle. Sixty to Seventy MPH gusts turned manageable fires into something else entirely. Pulaski later described it: "The wind was so strong that it almost lifted men out of their saddles, and the canyons seemed to act as chimneys, through which the wind and fires swept with the roar of a thousand freight trains."
The fire blew up around his crew on the west fork of Placer Creek. Forty-five men. Most of them unfamiliar with the terrain. All of them in immediate danger.
He Didn't Ask. He Moved.
Pulaski had been working this land for two years, blazing trails and cutting fire lines. He knew every contour of it. He had an idea.
He gave his horse to an ex-Texas Ranger who was limping from rheumatism and led the crew on foot through burning timber. He directed each man to grasp the shoulder of the man in front so they could stay together through the smoke. Trees were exploding into flame around them. A black bear ran alongside the group, the fire pushing it in the same direction as the men.
There was an abandoned mine nearby. The Nicholson tunnel. Six feet high. Five feet wide. Two hundred fifty feet deep. Pulaski ordered all forty-five men inside. Some balked. He insisted. The tunnel was their only option and he knew it.
The fire closed in. Timbers near the entrance began to smolder. Smoke filled the shaft. Men started to panic. Some tried to leave.
Pulaski drew his pistol.
"The next man who tries to leave the tunnel I will shoot."
He hung wet blankets over the entrance. There was a small stream running through the floor of the tunnel. He used his hat to carry water and keep the blankets wet, over and over, while the fire burned outside. He kept doing it until the smoke took him down. He was unconscious on the tunnel floor when one of the men said, "Come outside, boys. The boss is dead."
Pulaski opened his eyes.
"Like hell he is."
What Was Left.
When the men crawled out of the Nicholson tunnel the next morning, five hadn't made it through the night. The rest survived, including the man who had given up on the boss.
The Big Blowup burned more than three million acres across Idaho, Montana, and Washington in 36 hours. At least 85 people died. It remains one of the largest wildfires in American history.
Pulaski survived, but the fire had done its damage. His lungs were scarred from the smoke. His eyes were badly injured. He petitioned the government for compensation for his wounds. They turned him down. In 1923, he entered an essay contest to raise money for eye surgery. He won five hundred dollars.
The Pulaski.
In the years following the fire, while he was still healing, Pulaski went to his blacksmith shop and started tinkering. By 1913 he had built a combination axe and adze, one side for chopping, one side for grubbing, built for the kind of work that fire lines actually demand. His supervisor had been looking for a new forestry tool. What Pulaski built went further than that.
Every wildland firefighter in America has carried a Pulaski to work ever since. The design hasn't changed in over a hundred years because there's nothing to change. It's right. His original tool, initialed E.P. in the steel, is at the Wallace District Mining Museum, the same town he served, the same country he walked into a burning mine to save his crew.
He was never compensated for it. The Forest Service never paid him. The government never acknowledged it formally. He built the thing because it needed building.
Why Big Ed.
We named our Medium roast after him. This brand came out of the Idaho and Montana backcountry, out of the fire line, out of the people who did the work and asked for nothing and got exactly that. Big Ed Pulaski was that person before any of them. The name is his.
Every bag of Big Ed ships from Post Falls, Idaho. Craft roasted by Evans Brothers Roastery in Sandpoint, ID. Named for a ranger who earned it.
Drink it black.
Spike Camp Outpost, Post Falls, Idaho.
Sources: U.S. Forest Service historical records, NWCG PMS 4942 Leadership in the Wildland Fire Service, Wildfire Today, PBS American Experience, Museum of Idaho, Wallace District Mining Museum, Fire Management Notes Vol. 47 No. 3 (James B. Davis, USDA Forest Service).
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