100 years ago in Spokane: A visiting daredevil broke several particularly important bones when his parachutes wouldn’t open

Price Miller, well-known parachute daredevil from Portland, broke both legs, an arm and several vertebrae when his “triple jump” stunt went awry at the Interstate Fair.

Thousands watched as Miller’s third parachute failed to open on time.

“So hard did he hit the ground that the imprint of his heels, more than an inch deep, could be seen on the lawn where he landed,” the Chronicle reported.

“I wasn’t high enough when I cut from the balloon,” Miller said from the hospital. “Every chute worked perfectly but I was so low when I cut to the third chute that it didn’t have time to fully open. The third chute worked all right and was opening, but only checked the fall.”

His condition was satisfactory, and he was expected to recover.

From the Coeur d’Alene beat: The Coeur d’Alene Merchants Association adopted a new motto: “Coeur d’Alene, 20,000 within the next six years.”

That was an ambitious population goal. The 1920 census showed only 6,447 people in Coeur d’Alene. The population had actually fallen slightly from 1910.

As it turned out, the city would fall far short of this goal. The 1930 census would show 8,297 in the city.

That 20,000 person goal would not be achieved until the 1980 census. After that, the population boomed beyond the dreams of those 1923 merchants. The Census Bureau’s most recent Coeur d’Alene population estimate, from 2022, showed a population of 56,733.