On a spring day in 1979, a Forest Service aircraft carrying a crew of volunteers and trail workers soared above the rugged Idaho wilderness. What began as a routine flight to Moose Creek would soon become a story of tragedy, survival, and the enduring power of memory – a story that, decades later, local historian and author Richard H. Holm, Jr. would painstakingly piece together for a new generation.

Holm is no stranger to the landscapes and legends of Idaho. A fourth-generation Idaho resident, he has spent years chronicling the region’s backcountry airstrips, wilderness lore, and the people who call this place home. But his latest book, In Selway Shadows: Last Flight of 148Z, centered on the infamous plane crash in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, is more than a historical account – it’s a testament to the importance of preserving stories that might otherwise be lost to time.

The events of that fateful flight are as dramatic as any fiction. The twin engine DC-3 aircraft, a McCall smokejumper plane, was tasked with ferrying a group to the annual guard school at Moose Creek Ranger Station, a remote outpost in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. As the plane made its way from McCall to Grangeville (where it picked up its passengers), then on toward Moose Creek, disaster struck. An engine overheated and was shut down. Then, within minutes, the remaining engine caught fire, exploded, and fell from the aircraft.

By sheer chance, a backpacker – who happened to be a photographer for The Spokesman-Review – was hiking nearby along the Selway River Trail. He looked up, grabbed his camera, and began snapping photos, not knowing if he’d captured anything. Hours later, as rescue helicopters descended on the scene where the aircraft impacted the river, the photographer handed his film to one of the helicopter pilots asking him to then send it to his boss at the newspaper, still unaware of its significance. The next day, his images of the engine falling from the DC-3 made front pages across the country. “It’s a story of the airplane, why it happened, what happened, the what-ifs, and then the other part of it is Moose Creek and all the people and what they were doing and all these coincidences that happen,” Holm explains. “That’s how I wove the story.”

For Holm, the journey to tell this story began with a spark of curiosity and grew into an eight-year odyssey. “I had heard of the story multiple times, and I had done a short vignette on it in my book Bound for the Backcountry,” he recalls. But it wasn’t until an archaeologist from the Clearwater-Nez Perce National Forest, Cindy Schacher, contacted him about a mysterious aircraft data tag recovered from the Selway River that the project truly took flight.

With the help of primary documents, interviews, and a bit of luck, Holm began to unravel the layers of the story. He tracked down survivors, witnesses, and even the families of those who perished. “It took me eight years,” he says. “The intensity of that, obviously, varied… but the 24 months leading up to the time I published it, it is what I did in my free time.”

The research was as emotionally taxing as it was logistically challenging. “I made an effort to interview victims’ families and their friends, because I thought that it was important to capture these young people’s lives and how tragic it was that they ended and who they were,” he shares. “That was really heavy to contact those people. Out of the blue, here I am just searching on the internet. I call up somebody or email them about their deceased brother,sister,spouse, or relative.”

Despite the difficulty, the response was often deeply moving. “The feedback I received from people meant the world to me,” he says. “It made the book worthwhile because it mattered to them that somebody had recognized their relative or friend, who had lost their life in the accident.”

“To this day, June 11th, 1979, and its aftermath still haunts me on occasion.  Whenever I’m in the Selway country I say a prayer for all those who never went home, and while it may seem trite to say that you brought ‘closure’ to something that happened so long ago, that is exactly what your book did for me. Your book honors in a special way, all those on the flight, and the countless heroes that helped in the rescue effort. My uncle would be grateful to you for telling this story, and if he was around I’m sure the two of you would be having coffee somewhere, talking about flying in the backcountry.”

– Steve Riggers of McCall, whose uncle was John Slingerland, the copilot

While this book is a testament to the people on the flight and the events surrounding the crash, it also pays homage to Moose Creek, the intended destination of the flight. Moose Creek is more than just a part of the story – it’s a place of historical significance in the world of wilderness management. “Moose Creek is the epicenter of where boots-on-the-ground wilderness management was interpreted and applied,” Holm explains. “A lot of what backcountry trail crews do today all started at Moose Creek post-1964 when the Wilderness Act was enacted.”

The annual guard school, the reason for the ill-fated flight, was a gathering of volunteers and trail crew members dedicated to preserving the wild places of Idaho. The story of the crash is, in many ways, the story of the people who have devoted their lives to these lands.

Holm’s passion for history is rooted in his own family’s legacy. “My family’s been around McCall for a long time. I’m actually the fourth generation,” he says. “History always seemed very tangible to me, because they talk about places that I’ve been, places that we’re experiencing in current time.”

His journey as an author began with a desire to document the region’s backcountry airstrips – a project that grew into a series of books. “Nobody had actually written about it,” he says. “A mentor of mine had written about the rivers, but nobody had put together a history of all the airstrips, and so that just steamrolled from there.”

Writing, for Holm, is a labor of love and the topics that eventually materialize into finished books have to be special. “It’s got to be something that captures you, that you are very interested in, because it’s a lot of hard work that never monetarily pays out. It pays out in that you’ve done something for society and preserved something.”

This latest project, he admits, was the most perplexing yet. “I had never written a book that has all these different stories that are all interwoven to make a full narrative, and that was really challenging for me to put together,” he says. But Holm’s commitment to accuracy and authenticity is evident in his process. He enlisted aviation experts, historians, and mentors to review his work, ensuring that both the technical details and the human stories were faithfully represented.

For Holm, the end goal is clear: preservation. “You’re saving something that otherwise would be lost to time,” he says. “I like to think that in some small way, these book projects are helping to save something of our culture, of who we are as a society, even if it’s just on a local, regional scale.”

As for what’s next, Holm is taking a well-earned break – but ideas are always percolating. He’s considered a book on backcountry gardening, inspired by the unique plants and homesteads of Idaho’s wilderness, though he jokes that his wife isn’t quite on board with that one yet. In the meantime, he’s focused on sharing the story of Moose Creek and the last flight of 148Z.

Richard Holm’s latest book is available at local outlets like Barn Owl Books and May Hardware.