Chicago in Flames by Currier and Ives, 1871

Chicago Fire excerpt from 

Road of Stars 

by Byron Grush

Chicago, October 8, 1871: there has been only about an inch of rain in the last one hundred days; dry leaves cover lawns whose grass has turned brown; everywhere the wooden planks of the sidewalks are cracked from a lack of moisture. And now the city is preparing for winter. Hay is piled high in barns and cords of wood are stacked along the sides of houses. In the poorer districts like Conley’s Patch, tenement buildings are built so close to one another that their wood shingle roofs nearly touch.

All across the Midwest the drought and unusually high temperatures have created fire hazards; in fact, small fires have erupted in dried-out cedar swaps and peat bogs in Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois. The dead branches of trees and the dust from sawmill wastes have been dumped thoughtlessly into creek beds now devoid of water. Farmers have continued the dangerous practice of clearing forest lands by setting fires, some of which get out of hand.

There have been isolated fires everyday in the City of Big Shoulders. The fire department is a full-time regiment of 185 professional firefighters who do their jobs well, but who are becoming over-taxed. They have asked for new hydrants and water mains for some time, and have pointed out the need for building inspections and fire boats for the river, but the city has refused these requests for lack of funds. The five story buildings in the central business district are built with thin walls of brick and are trimmed with wood—and are firetraps waiting to ignite.

Yesterday, a fire had broken out that ravaged an area four blocks square: from Van Buren to Adams and from Clinton to the south branch of the river. The valiant fire department had battled the blaze for over 17 hours. It was contained and extinguished because they had arrived on the scene early. The fire companies of Chicago pride themselves on their ability to locate fires quickly. Their expertise is lauded. This tragedy of October 7 is considered to be a major fire in the annuals of Chicago firefighting—it is only a prelude.

It is Sunday. Tommy Wepa has been working in the stock room at Field and Leiter along side his friend, Harry Sheffield, for nearly a year now. Sundays are his day off. He has spent the day strolling through the Lake Park, gazing at the brown-stone buildings of Park Row which face the lake. Yesterday’s fire was just across the river from his neighborhood, the tenement district called Mother Conley’s Patch. The smell of smoke still permeates his clothing. He is not anxious to return home but the sun is due to set shortly and night is not a good time to be walking through Conley’s Patch.

The Patch along Monroe Street had once been the realm of the wealthy who had built mansions there resembling southern plantation homes complete with Greek columns and large gardens. But Conley’s Patch was in decline. The Chicago Gas Light and Coke Company had built their plant on the corner of Monroe and Market. Lumberyards lined the river. North’s National Amphitheater, which occupied Monroe Street between Wells and Clark, had brought an influx of circus and carnival people into the neighborhood. Property values pummeled. Criminals had found a fertile ground in the emerging squalor of the shanty town.

But it is cheap, a requisite for survival for the young Native American boy. He arrives at his boarding house after a quick meal at Lill’s and climbs the stairs to his room. It is about 7:30 PM. He sits on the bed and opens his McGuffey’s Reader, a first grade textbook he is studying in order to learn to read. His body is tired. His eyes are tired. He nods off. As he sleeps the earth is hurtling through space. It orbits the sun at a speed of approximately 69,360 miles per hour.

Also orbiting the sun, but at a greater distance, is a comet which astronomers have named, Biela. Biela, perhaps twenty or thirty years ago, split into two parts, trailing long debris fields in its wakes. The earth, on this 8th day of October, 1871, is intersecting those debris fields. Fragments are entering the earth’s atmosphere and burning up. Eleven years from now, a man named Ignatius Donnelly, will publish a book entitled, Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel, in which he will present the theory that this comet, Biela, is responsible for the catastrophes which are about to take place tonight.

It is 9:30 PM. The McLaughlins are throwing a party in the house they rent in front of Patrick O’Leary’s cottage. Daniel “Peg Leg” Sullivan has just left the party and is stumbling toward his own house just across De Koven Street from the McLaughlins. He looks back and sees flames licking up from the roof of the O’Leary’s barn.

Near the small town of Sugar Bush, Wisconsin, at nearly the identical moment, a fire has broken out in a dried-out swamp and is about to touch off several tons of hay which have been stored in a nearby barn. Both of these fires will be whipped into whirling dervishes of firestorm by a fierce wind from the south-west. Flaming embers will sail in all directions as the fiery cyclone eats its way through Peshtigo and Door County in Wisconsin, Holland and Manistee in Michigan, and Chicago in Illinois. Simultaneously, acres upon acres of forests and city buildings will be destroyed; many thousands will die or will be injured.

Tommy Wepa has fallen asleep; his McGuffey’s Reader has slipped from his hand. He doesn’t hear the bells clanging as seven different fire companies hurry toward De Koven Street, a little over a mile to the south and west of him. This time the engines are not Johnny-on-the-spot: a watchman has seen the flames from his post on the courthouse tower but he mistakes the location. He tries to change his report but the telegraph operator decides not to confuse the issue and won’t send out the change of address. Someone close to the O’Leary barn fire pulls the level on an alarm box but the signal fails to transmit.

It will be said that the firefighters were either fatigued or drunk or both, but in fact, the fire is out of control before their arrival. The wind has churned the hellish blast and sent it bounding across the rooftops and slithering dragon-like up the wooden sidewalks. The south-west side is just a pile of dry kindling waiting for the dragon’s hot kiss. It is now 10:00 PM and Bateham’s Mill at Clinton and Harrison is aflame. The dragon is moving west, toward the south branch of the river; it eats the Polk Street Bridge as it crosses. Waste and oil floating in the water ignites and soon the very river is burning. Lumberyards and warehouses filled with dry goods are feeding the hungry monster as winds push it back toward the city center.

It should be halted by the burned out area from yesterday’s fire. There is nothing left there that can burn. But it leaps and spits out tongues of flame that flail and fling out burning embers that land on the east side of the river. Shacks along Adams and Jackson are incinerated. It is 11:30 PM. Tommy is awakened by cries from the street below. Something is wrong. The sky is too bright for this time of night. The stables at Franklin and Jackson are burning. The screams of horses trapped and confused by the smoke can now be heard for blocks.

The Gas Works explodes. This dooms the Court House and all of Conley’s Patch. Tommy is now out of the building. Its roof is burning. Smoke and dust fills the air. People are running in all directions, unsure of the route to safety. The bell in the courthouse has been sounding the alarm but the tower collapses and it comes crashing down making one glorious, final reverberation. Prisoners housed in the basement of the courthouse have been turned loose. The fire is sweeping toward the business district.

People are now rushing to cross the main branch of the river to the north side of the city. The bridges are crowded by carriages and drays. People are dragging bundles and hampers filled with what valuables they have had time to grab. A railing breaks and some of those on foot are pushed off into the water. Cinders are falling like blackened snow and fire brands are flung about in the super-heated air. Flames shoot up from the roof of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad Station like a golden crown. 

Tommy is in the throng crossing the State Street Bridge. Many have faces reddened by the heat. To the east of them horses and wagons have been driven into the lake and women and children have waded out to climb upon the wagons; some are standing in the shallow water. North of the river would seem more likely to be where salvation lies, but it is not to be so. By 3:00 PM the roof of the Water Works is smoldering. By 3:30 PM, it collapses destroying the pumping machinery inside. Fighting the flames is now hopeless.

He reaches a stretch of the lakeshore just beyond the North Branch of the Chicago River called the Sands. Here and in nearby Lincoln Park, they have gathered: the now-homeless, the devastated, the despairing. Tommy witnesses heartbreaking scenes of families huddled around broken pieces of furniture, worn blankets, odd boxes and suitcases, their faces blackened by soot, their children sobbing. Rich and poor are clustered together here, perhaps encountering each other for the first time.

It is the morning of October 10th. A light rain is falling. The last of the flames are winking out. The city is still too hot to be reoccupied, but people are moving back to the burned-out areas to salvage what they can. There is nothing to salvage. The toll is monstrous: 18,000 buildings, 28 miles of streets and 120 miles of sidewalks, 300 innocent lives—gone. 100,000 homeless. An area four miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide is blackened and smoldering.

The Chamber of Commerce Building is gone. The Court House is gone, and with it, deeds and records of the other properties that have disappeared in flame and smoke. McCormack’s Reaper factory is gone. Conley’s Patch is a blackened prairie. The Tremont house, Crosby’s Opera House, Field and Leiter’s Department Store, the Palmer House, Colonel Wood’s Museum,  the Arcade buildings, all of Bookseller’s Row, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times buildings, the City Water Works, churches, banks, stores, restaurants, houses: gone. Ironically, Patrick O’Leary’s house still stands.

In Wisconsin, an area the size of Rhode Island has been destroyed; twelve communities have disappeared from the face of the earth. In Peshtigo, 350 of its citizens are buried in a mass grave; the death toll will be estimated as being between 1,200 and 2,500. Thousands are maimed. The burned carcasses of cattle and horses lie among ashes and still glowing embers. Everywhere there is devastation.

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