WPA The World's Finest Kelly PULASKI 1930s Depression Era Collectible 3-3 For Sale

During the Great Depression Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935 as part of the New Deal. WPA crews worked closely with government agencies like the U.S. Forest Service to construct forestry infrastructure, clear firebreaks, build trails, and fight forest fires across national forests. Tools explicitly stamped "WPA" were government-issued equipment carried by thousands of workers who helped reshape the American wilderness during the 1930s and early 1940s.

The Heroic Origin of the Pulaski:The tool itself carries one of the most famous survival stories in forestry history. On August 20, 1910, ranger Ed Pulaski was credited with saving all but five of his 45-man crew during the catastrophic "Great Fire of 1910."

Dry conditions had left fires rampant across the Northern Rockies. Pulaski was supervising crews on the west fork of Placer Creek, about five miles south of Wallace, Idaho, when the blaze suddenly erupted out of control and threatened to overwhelm his crew. Drawing on his knowledge of the area, Pulaski led his men to safety inside an abandoned mine shaft.

Knowing survival outside was impossible, he ordered his crew onto the tunnel floor and famously held them at gunpoint with his pistol to keep anyone from panicking and running out into the inferno. Lying prone on the floor as two horses died of smoke inhalation, 40 of the 45 men survived. Pulaski suffered severe burns, eye and lung damage, and was temporarily blinded, but remained with the Forest Service until 1929.

In 1911, drawing on his years of experience, Ed Pulaski invented the Pulaski tool—a brilliant hybrid combining an axe and a mattock—which quickly became, and remains today, the standard issue tool for wildland firefighters across the globe.