Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

A young woman came home to Spokane after 12 years of roaming around cities in the Northwest and said, “I’ve come, pa. How’s everybody?”

Then she went to her old bedroom and committed suicide with a pistol.

Her distraught father reported that for years he had heard of her only at intervals “drifting from town to town with only hints as to what she was doing.”

At one point, she wrote from Wallace. She had recently worked as a barber.

Her father said that even as a young girl, she had been subject to fits of melancholy and had several times threatened to take her own life.

From the forest fire beat: An army of 1,500 men was fighting dozens of fires in the forests of North Idaho and Montana. Forest officials had already “exhausted” the supply of men in Missoula and were bringing in crews by trains from far-flung places.

From the booze beat: A Wenatchee man attempted to foil the town’s “dry” laws by hiring a wagon to haul two kegs of beer from Leavenworth for his friends to drink.

The wagon had an accident, the kegs spilled onto the road, and the man was fined $200.