Edward C. Pulaski was a strong, mature, experienced man hired by the fledgling Forest Service in 1908. He had left school in Green Springs, Ohio, at age 15 to seek fortune and adventure in the West, and before becoming a Forest Ranger he learned many trades, including mining, ranching, and logging. During his Forest Service career he demonstrated his abilities as a packer, surveyor, forester, firefighter, and blacksmith. Ed married Emma Dickinson in 1900, and they adopted a daughter, Elsie, who later recalled her father as a six-foot-three, handsome fellow with blue eyes and brown hair. A Forest Supervisor of Coeur d’ Alene Nat. Forest described Pulaski as about forty years of age, a man of excellent judgment, conservative, thoroughly acquainted with the region, having prospected throughout the burned area during the previous twenty-five years, and regarded by old-timers as one of the best and safest men who could have been placed in charge of a crew in the hills. The demands placed on a ranger required vigor, self-reliance, and the ability to care for himself and his horses under trying conditions, build trails and cabins, ride day and night, pack, shoot, and fight fire. Although a myth held that Edward Pulaski was the great-grandson of Count Kazimierz Casimir Pulaski, the American Revolutionary War hero regarded as the father of the American cavalry, Edward Pulaski was not a direct descendant of Count Pulaski.