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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

100 years ago in Spokane: Twin Lakes Hotel burns, as does North Idaho forest

The Twin Lakes Hotel at Dellar’s Landing burned to the ground in a fire around breakfast time, the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported.

All of the occupants of this 17-room wooden hotel escaped without injury. The cause “is believed to be a defective flue.”

The Twin Lakes Hotel had been built about seven years earlier by proprietor A.F. Malmstrom.

“Mr. Malmstrom and daughter, who were in the city purchasing supplies for Sunday, did not know of the fire until they read of it in the morning edition of the Chronicle,” a later edition of the Spokane Daily Chronicle said. “They left at once by automobile for the lake.”

From the wildfire beat: Forest fires in North Idaho were fanned by winds and were threatening the town of Prichard, Idaho, which was only 3 1/2 miles away. Loggers were forced to abandon one nearby camp.

Meanwhile, the War Department ordered 2,000 federal troops into the Pacific Northwest to fight widespread fires. About 500 of those soldiers were headed for headquarters in Spokane.

One fire commander said that the troops were coming “in the nick of time.”

From the profiteering beat: Three employees of the Spokane Hotel were arrested for the wholesale theft of foodstuffs over the last six months.

The men, one of whom was the hotel’s storekeeper, apparently appropriated entire cases of ham, bacon, canned pineapples and other goods and then sold them.

Hotel authorities noticed a pattern of missing goods on their accounts and tipped off police. Some of the stolen food was found in the suspects’ possession.