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Note: Chuck Hilt served in the Spanish American War in 1898/9 as a Wagoner in Company H, 1st Idaho Infantry, mustering out at San Francisco, California.
After his service in the war, John appears in the 1900 census for Boise County, Idaho, working as a teamster for a gold miner near Idaho City, in the mountains above Boise. We have a photo of him mining gold with several buddies, so this may have been at about the same time. By 1906 he worked for the U.S. Forest Service at Lowman, Idaho, northeast of Idaho City. We have a letter citing John for his superb action fighting the Clear Creek-Deadwood Divide fire in Aug. 1906. When he came to Port Angeles about 1910 he worked for the U.S. Forest Service at the Elwha District, under Chris Morgenroth, living up about where the present day Ranger Station is, near Griff Creek. John F. Hilt is listed in the 1910 census as single, registered in Piedmont Precinct of Olympic National Forest.
We don't know when he quit that job, but Warren Hilt remembers he had to ride a horse from there to work the Sol Duc Burn fire on Snider Ridge. His obituary states he left the Forest Service in 1914. He then worked at Penn. Garage, which is just south of Angeles Millworks at 16th & C streets. A job as a boilerman at the Charles Nelson Mill was next in the 1930s, then with Washington Motor Coach, located at Lincoln and Railroad streets, as a mechanic and bus driver on the Seattle to Port Angeles route. The last place he worked was for the P.A. Western R.R. as a watchman and fire stoker.
John is buried in the veteran's plot at Ocean View Cemetery in Port Angeles, Washington.
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