Remembering Park City's Great Fire

Remembering Park City's Great Fire

BY DAVID HAMPSHIRE

FIRES HAVE HELPED DEFINE PARK CITY in much the way they have helped define Yellowstone National Park The town's history has been punctuated by savage conflagrations that have cleansed the town of its older structures in frenzied destructive bursts.

Many current residents remember the searing blaze that demolished the majestic old Silver King Coalition ore-loading station on Park Avenue in 1981. Some still recall the frightening fire that took out half a city block on the west side of Main Street in 1973. With wood-frame structures built shoulder to shoulder in a narrow canyon, Park City's mining-camp muddle has always been an invitation to disaster. Under the right conditions, flames can dance from building to building, mocking the feeble efforts of fire crews to control them.

And the conditions were right on June 19, 1898. According to the Park Record, Park City's weekly newspaper, a stiff breeze was blowing from the south that morning when a policeman sounded the alarm.

Bang! Bang!! Bang!!! Three pistol shots fired by Policeman Walden at 4 o'clock Sunday morning last, sounded the death knell of Park City's happiness and contentment A few heart-rending shrieks from the whistle at the Marsac mill and a drowsy community was aroused to witness a sight that caused stout-hearted men to stand paralyzed, women to faint and children to scream with fear.1

Fire had broken out at the American Hotel on the east side of upper Main Street.2 The Salt Lake Herald later suggested, without much evidence, that someone using coal oil to start the kitchen stove may have triggered the blaze. However, the hotel proprietor told the Salt Lake Tribune that he thought a drunken lodger may have kicked over a lamp.

As Park City's volunteer firefighters scrambled from their beds, flames quickly shot through the roof and rode the winds down the street to the adjacent buildings.John Funk's barber shop, the Bates & Kimball drugstore, and the Judge, Ivers and Keith stable were quickly enveloped.

At that time the stable had the contract to haul ore from the Silver King Mine, in the mountains west of town, to the Union Pacific Depot at the bottom of Main Street. It was a big operation; there were more than 100 horses in the stable when the fire broke out "Horses were whinnying, men shouting, whistles screeching," the Salt Lake Tribune reported. "The spectacle as the first shafts of approaching day shot athwart the eastern hills was appalling."3 The stable lost all its harnesses and ore wagons, along with forty tons of oats and eight tons of hay Fortunately, all but seven horses were rescued

By this time, local residents, realizing that their own well-being was in jeopardy, had begun spilling into the street. Some were barefoot, still in their nightclothes. Others had grabbed the first pieces of clothing within reach.

"When we looked out of the window, we saw it was a big fire and not very far off," said the diary of nine-year-old Edna Sutton whose father ran a local butcher shop. "Allie hurried and went to help. Aunt Cora and Ma hurried and dressed. It kept coming nearer. Aunt Annie and Aunt Maud came running down The folks kept running by and saying one building after another was going. Allie, Uncle Dave and Uncle Lynn said the shop and house would sur[e]ly go. The[y] got the team and put in our trunks, piano and curtains. While they went with the things, Uncle Lynn took up the carpets."4

George Hall, proprietor of the Park City Hotel on the west side of Main Street, also scrambled to salvage some of his family's possessions, along with furniture and bedding from the hotel, and move them to the Kimball house, a large two-story structure on lower Park Avenue.

Many others followed this example, dragging their possessions out into the street But few had the luxury of horse and wagon to carry them to safety.

"Hundreds of men and women, too, worked with desperation to save their belongings," the Park Record reported, "but nearly everything that was taken into the street was quickly consumed in the fierce •-».«. heat and blaze that was driven through town with an intensity that resembled the flame from the end of a blowpipe."5

Relentlessly, the fire swept on down the street, consuming building after building. It gutted the Grand Opera House, an elegant three-story brick building designed by Salt Lake City architect J.A Headlund that I had been open only about a year The winds also veered in both directions, carrying the flames east into Chinatown—in the area now known | as Swede Alley—and west to the other side of Main Street. From Chinatown the flames raced up into * the cluster of miners' cabins on Rossie Hill (which the Tribune reporter spelled phonetically as "Raw Chill").

By 5 A.M. the flames had burned through the block on the west side of Main Street, reaching Park Avenue, which was home to the city's churches and "the aristocratic portion of Park City's population," to use the Tribune's words

"Then the whole gulch in which the business district is located was a river of flame. Fire brands were being swished through the air for hundreds and hundreds of feet and dropping among the inflammable material around the buildings, stables and outhouses," wrote the Park Record reporter.

There was good water pressure in the city's mains, according to the Park Record. However, the volunteer fire crews, armed with little more than a few hose carts and a hook-and-ladder truck, were no match for the flames. They tried to create firebreaks by demolishing buildings with "giant" (blasting) powder but with little success.

"Again and again the buildings were blown up by giant powder to create a gap over which the fire would not leap," the Salt Lake Herald reported, "but the demon only laughed at the puny effort and reached out its reddened tongue further to destroy."6

Along Park Avenue, citizens tried to make a stand. One of those was the town doctor, E.R LeCompte, whose heroic efforts were described by the Tribune:

Doctor Le Compte, in a determined effort to cheat the flames of his pretty home, toward which they were rapaciously advancing, had an adventure that was almost satanic. With his lawn hose he persisted in playing upon his dwelling while a neighbor kept him drenched with buckets of water Now and then a flame reached him, but not until he began to remove his clothes and search for a fresh suit did he learn that in the fight with the flames the tails of his coat had been burned to a crisp, that his shoulderblades were exposed and that a pair of new trousers were necessary to prevent an arrest for undue exposure. The doctor lost his clothes, but after as game a fight as was put up by any man engaged in it, saved his home from all but a thorough drenching and a terrific roast.7

The Park Record ran a sketch of "Dr. LeCompte After The Battle," with wisps of smoke hovering around him like a swarm of bees, his coat hanging in tatters from his back.

The most conspicuous building to survive the blaze was the Marsac Mill, a large multi-story building directly east of Main Street that processed ore from the silver mines. Three or four times it was ignited by the flames, only to be doused by water from hoses manned by the mill's own employees.

Park City's telephone link to the outside world was severed when the flames demolished the First National Bank building, where the switchboard was located. However, the telegraph link remained intact at the Union Pacific depot at the bottom of Main Street. Three hours after the blaze started, Park City Fire Chief James Berry used the telegraph to appeal to his counterparts in Salt Lake City and Ogden.

"Send us some help to put out fire here. The city is burning," said a dispatch that arrived at the Ogden fire station shortly after 7 A.M.8 About an hour later, special trains left Salt Lake City and Ogden, carrying men and equipment to fight the fire. Unfortunately, by the time they arrived, there was little to do except soak down the smoldering ruins.

"FLAMES DESTROY PARK CITY. The Greatest Blaze That has Ever Occurred in the History of Utah," blared the lead story in the Salt Lake Tribune the following day For the moment, the SpanishAmerican War exploits of Admiral George Dewey and Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt were relegated to the inside pages.

The fire had wiped out virtually the entire business district, from Heber Avenue on the north to Fifth Street on the south. 9 A front-page sketch in the Tribune onJune 21 showed a scene of surreal devastation. The block between Main Street and Park Avenue was leveled, with John Harwood's concrete house the only survivor in a landscape of blackened rubble. East of Main Street, the Marsac Mill stood alone in the smoking ruins.

The Suttons lost both their home and their shop. "The only thing that they got out of the shop that was worth anything was the marble slab of the counter," said the diary of Edna Sutton's older brother, Willie. "They saved a little meat and a few hams. Our things were stored in the small house back of the Kimball house."10 Park Record editor Sam Raddon also lost his house and his Main Street building, including the newspaper's files dating back to its inception in 1880.

The Tribune, the Herald, and the Park Record each ran an inventory of the buildings lost in the fire, along with their estimated value: about 200 buildings, with a value of about $1 million, had been burned. Among the casualties were five churches, two opera houses, two bank buildings, the city hall, and numerous retail shops and saloons. One church—St. Mary's of the Assumption Catholic church—survived, thanks to its location beyond the southern perimeter of the fire.

An Ogden firefighter found a moment of humor among the devastation, recalling for the benefit of the Salt Lake Tribune this encounter with a Park City resident: "I was quite amused at a fellow Irishman who happened on the scene during my stay at the Park He sized me up for an instant and, concluding that I was of his own nationality, he said: 'Well, well, the Mormon church is gone, the Methodist church is gone and the Episcopal church is gone, while the Roman Catholic church still stands; sure the Lord was with us in this, our hour of need.'"

Miraculously, no one died in the blaze. However, in addition to the seven horses, the flames immolated several family pets, including "Duke," a St. Bernard locked in the Bates & Kimball drugstore. The Tribune estimated that at least 1,500 people were left homeless by the fire. "The doors of every dwelling that survived the cruel flames have been thrown open to all alike; the awful misfortune has wiped out all caste and leveled all ranks Tents and other structures have been improvised; others have found rest in a roll of blankets upon the loose earth, but all have found rest in whatever rugged form it came."

A messenger set out on horseback to notify Mayor J.H. Deming, who was in the Strawberry Valley, fishing, while Park City burned As the assistant cashier for the First National Bank and an insurance agent with policies on a number of Park City buildings, Deming was much in demand. He returned to town about 3 A.M. the following day. Unfortunately, insurance covered only about 10 percent of the losses, according to calculations made by the Salt Lake Tribune and the Salt Lake Herald. One of the costliest losses was the Grand Opera House, valued at $50,000. It was insured for only $5,000—and the policy reportedly had lapsed the day before the fire!

Would Park City ever recover? At one point it would have been blasphemy to ask that question. The discovery of a rich vein of silver in Ontario Canyon in 1872 had touched off two decades of wild optimism and explosive growth for Park City. For a time, the mining camp's potential seemed unlimited. However, the collapse of silver prices in the early 1890s had cast a cloud over silver-mining districts across the West.

"As the price of silver kept going down, it soon wiped out the profit of mining, and in the summer of 1897 the big mines which had sustained and built up the entire [Park City] district were forced to [temporarily] close down," the Tribune reported. 1 1 Many families left town to look for work elsewhere.

According to the Herald, insurance companies were turning their backs on the "once proud and prosperous mining town. . . . Recently, as fire insurance risks have been expiring, the companies have declined to renew, saying it was the intention to retire from the Park City field. All of the agencies have continued to write risks, but at stiffer rates and on a basis of shrinking values."12

In an editorial in the same issue, the Herald wondered how much of the town would be rebuilt "Aside from the great loss involved in yesterday's fire, it will have a depressing effect upon those who suffered losses and all others interested in the town directly. With business so slow as it is now, there will be a disinclination to build again."

Gawkers swarmed into Park City from surrounding towns to view the devastation; several, including Coalville photographer George Beard, carried "Kodaks." Crews began to level the masonry walls left standing by the fire. "The toughestjob Marshal Hyde had after the fire was to shoot down [with explosives] the towering remnants of the Grand Opera House walls," the Park Record reported. "He said they were the finest specimens of good brickwork he ever saw."

On Tuesday afternoon, only two days after the fire, the whistles at the Marsac Mill sounded the alarm again. The Kimball house on lower Park Avenue, where George Hall had moved after the destruction of the Park City Hotel, was on fire. In spite of the best efforts of firefighters, the building was destroyed.

"Everything which he saved from the burning hotel on Sunday morning was placed [in the Kimball house], and included bedding, furniture and personal effects," the Salt Lake Tribune reported on June 22. "All succumbed to flames yesterday, even to thejewelry and money which Mrs. Hall had placed in her purse for safe keeping, and the saving and work of the proprietor on Sunday last counted for naught." Fortunately, the flames didn't reach the small adjacent building where the Suttons had stored their belongings.

In spite of the Salt Lake newspapers' gloomy assessment, Park City merchants wasted no time in going back to work By the day after the fire, several saloons were already operating from makeshift facilities. The Suttons began selling meat from a corner of the Union Pacific depot. The Park Record never missed an issue. Editor Sam Raddon set up a tent on the paper's charred Main Street lot, and the Herald agreed to handle the printing until the new presses arrived.

Several Park City women, representing the various churches, organized a relief committee to help those who had been burned out. In the following four months they raised about $5,700 in cash and distributed about 6,700 pounds of flour, 51 tons of coal, and numerous articles of clothing In spite of the open hostility that had been directed toward Latter-day Saints in Park City, the committee included Mormons; the Mormon Tabernacle Choir also held a benefit concert for fire victims.13

By July 2, according to the Park Record, thirtyfive new buildings were under construction. In their haste to rebuild, most business owners erected wood-frame structures. Construction of the Record's new offices began on July 4; they were ready for occupancy only twelve days later. George Hall's new Park City Hotel was almost finished by the end ofJuly.

"Since the fire, which occurred one month ago Tuesday, the 19th, an average of one building a day in the business district has been erected," the Park Record said on July 23. "By the time the snow flies, Main street will boast in the neighborhood of seventy-five new buildings."

William Sutton's new butcher/grocery shop, with meeting space on the second floor for the Masons, opened about the end of August "Papa has got the shop all finished and also the Masonic Hall over it and it is a very nice place," said one of the Sutton diaries. "The Boy [Willie] helped to work on it until it was finished, and has been lots of help in the Grocier [sic] department. [He] can remember prices quite well."

A new opera house, also made of wood, was rushed to completion on the site of the old Judge, Ivers and Keith stable The building, with a bowling alley in the basement, was christened the Dewey Theatre after the Spanish-American War hero.

A few business owners were more deliberate. The First National Bank bought a lot on the west side of Main Street and announced plans to erect a stone and brick structure in conjunction with the Silver King Mining Company. According to the local newspaper:

The plans for the building were drawn up by Fred A. Hale, of Salt Lake, and the blue prints show a handsome and imposing front The finest red pressed brick will be used in both the front and the south side walls. A brick division wall will separate the bank from the Silver King office side of the building, and a splendid, modern, roomy,joint vault—each side being 6x8 and seven feet high inside—will intersect the division wall.14

Frederic A. Hale is known as the architect of a number of distinguished structures in Salt Lake City, including the Alta Club, the David Keith building, and the David Keith mansion on South Temple.

Meanwhile, the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company bought property on the east side of Main Street and hired architect Richard Kletting to design a two-story brick building. Kletting, the architect of several other telephone-exchange buildings in Utah and surrounding states, secured a place in Utah history by designing the first Saltair resort, a fanciful Moorish castle on the shores of the Great Salt Lake That Kletting creation burned in 1925, but another of his designs—the State Capitol—continues to stand guard over Salt Lake City today.

Frank Andrew, whose furniture store on the east side of Main Street was gutted in the fire, erected a new stone building with a brick facade The city council voted to rebuild the city hall, keeping virtually intact the Main Street facade that had survived the fire. The remains of another brick buildingjust south of the city hall were also incorporated into a new structure that, by 1900, housed a tailor and harness-maker.

In its New Year's edition in 1899, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that sixty-three buildings had been erected in the burned-out district.

Park City has risen phoenix-like from its ashes When on the morning of the 19th of June almost the entire business portion of the town, together with scores of dwellings, lay in smoldering ruins, it was on every tongue that Park City was a thing of the past; that the town would never be rebuilt, and that this last calamity, following the bank failure and the terrible drop in silver, was the last act in the drama of this great mining camp.

But the pessimists for the moment forgot that the city is supported entirely by the great mines of precious metals hidden in the surrounding hills, and that the productive capacity of the camp was not in the slightest impaired by the terrible calamity which had ruined so many individuals in the camp. 15

The Sanborn-Perris map of 1900 shows about seventy new Main Street buildings in the area gutted by the fire Of those, all but thirteen were wood-frame structures A few years later, this dependence on wood as a building material may have hurt Park City's bid to wrest the county courthouse away from Coalville. In the fall of 1902, Summit County residents were asked to vote on a proposal to move the county seat. In arguing against the plan, the Coalville Times questioned the wisdom of spending $50,000 or $60,000 to build a new courthouse in an area surrounded by wooden structures

It may be claimed that greater precautions will be taken. It is conceded, however, that the majority of the new buildings erected since the fire are very temporary bal[l]oon wooden structures, with less substantial permanent buildings If the town is considered so permanent, with such a bright future as is claimed by the advocates of removal [of the county seat from Coalville], why is it that the leading merchants and hotel proprietors have not erected substantial fire-proof buildings? Has not the fact that it is a mining town and the fear of a lack of permanence deter [r]ed them from making anything but temporary buildings?16

When the vote was counted in November 1902, Park City proponents had fallen just short of the two-thirds majority needed to move the county seat. Construction on a new sandstone courthouse in Coalville began the following year. That imposing structure, with an addition built about twenty years ago, still serves the people of Summit County.

In the long term, the prevalence of hastily-built wooden structures after the fire committed Park City's Main Street to many more years of change as, one after another, the post-fire wooden buildings vanished from the landscape. One of the first to go was the Park City Hotel, which burned in July 1912. The Park Record gave credit to the city's new high-pressure water system for preventing the hotel fire from triggering a recurrence of the 1898 fire. A year later, the New Park Hotel, made of brick, was erected in its place. That building is now known as the Claimjumper Hotel.17

Then, in January 1916, the Dewey Theatre collapsed under the weight of heavy snow The collapse came about two hours after some 300 silent-movie patrons had left the building "During the entire performance, 'creaking' and 'banging' noises were heard, causing much nervousness, but none seemed to connect the unusual noises with the breaking of timbers in the building," the Park Record reported. 1 8

According to Park City historians George Thompson and Fraser Buck, the manager of the Dewey, rather than risk a panic by evacuating the building, ordered the projectionist to speed up the film, while the piano accompanist struggled to keep up. 19

The Record claimed that the building had been considered a dangerous fire-trap for a number of years. "It was poorly constructed to begin with and with changes made at different times, it was weakened, until it became a menace, and the public generally is glad that it is wrecked." The Egyptian Theatre, built of brick, opened on the same site in 1926

The Park Record's own building, reflecting the personality of its feisty editor, Sam Raddon, proved more difficult to bring down. It continued to house the newspaper's offices and plant until 1956 when Raddon's descendants sold the paper. In April 1958, groaning under the weight of about six feet of ice and snow, the old building was finally torn down.20

Among a handful of 1898 post-fire wooden buildings that continue to defy the odds is Sutton's building, which still stands on the west side of Main Street across from the Post Office, a diamondshaped opening on the second floor giving a hint about its former Masonic occupants.21

On the other hand, the stone and brick buildings have suffered a kinder fate. Of the eight such structures built in the fire-ravaged area by 1900, five are still in use today.22

Of the buildings that defied the flames, the Marsac Mill soon outlived its usefulness and was demolished in 1904. A portion of its sandstone foundation still holds back the hill east of the old city hall. On the other hand, John Harwood's concrete home still stands at the corner of Park and Heber avenues. The building later served as the boyhood home of Willis W Ritter, who went on to become a federal judge in Utah known for his bristiy demeanor on the bench. Still later, it doubled as a restaurant and a house of ill-repute. Since Park City turned to skiing, the building has held several retail businesses.23

Although the people of Park City would never have admitted it, the editor of the Coalville Times was probably right. By putting their faith in flimsy wooden structures—many of them supported by the most tenuous of foundations—residents were expressing a lack of confidence in their town's future. And that attitude ultimately took a toll on Main Street Today, Park City's "historic" business district lacks the nineteenth-century authenticity of other western mining towns such as Virginia City, Nevada. The overwhelming majority of Main Street buildings date from the twentieth century, including many built in the thirty-five years since skiing replaced mining as the economic lifeblood of the town.

Architects working in Park City today walk a fine line, trying to satisfy historic district guidelines that call for new buildings to pay homage to mining-era structures without replicating them. The success of this approach is open to question. Many visitors struggle to identify which buildings are, in fact, historically significant and which ones are recent fabrications. Some critics say that the guidelines promote architectural chicanery, turning the business district into a caricature of itself in the pursuit of tourist dollars. Why not let new buildings reflect the architecture of their own era, critics ask, instead of some arbitrary conception of what the town may have looked like a century ago?

One hundred years after Park City burned, such questions are part of the legacy left by the Great Fire of 1898.

NOTES

David Hampshire, former director of the Park City Museum, is co-author of the Summit County centennial history. He has also served on the Park City Historic District Commission.

1 Park Record, June 25, 1898.

2 On the site of the present Prothro Building.

3 Salt Lake Tribune, June 20, 1898.

4 Diary of Edna Sutton, MS, Utah State Historical Society Edna's parents, William and Susie Sutton, started a diary on her behalf at the time of her birth in 1888 This entry, along with the others in the early years of Edna's life, was written by an adult, possibly her mother The Suttons also kept a similar diary for Edna's older brother, Willie.

5 Park Record, op. cit.

6 Salt Lake Herald, June 20, 1898.

7 Salt Lake Tribune, June 21, 1898.

8 Salt Lake Herald, op cit.

9 Fifth Street was later renamed Third Street and now survives as a set of public stairs immediately north of the present Treasure Mountain Inn.

10 Diary of Willie Sutton, MS, Utah State Historical Society.

11 Salt Lake Tribune, January 1, 1899.

12 Salt Lake Herald, op cit.

13 Park Record, September 3, September 24, October 15, 1898.

14 Park Record, August 13, 1898.

15 Salt Lake Tribune, January 1, 1899.

16 Coalville Times, October 31, 1902.

17 Park Record, July 13, 1912, April 5, 1913, and November 8, 1913.

18 Park Record, January 21, 1916.

19 George A. Thompson and Fraser Buck, Treasure Mountain Home: Park City Revisited (Salt Lake City: Dream Garden Press, 1981), p 166.

20 Park Record, April 24, 1958.

21 The building, which includes an addition built soon after the turn of the century, is now known as the Anderson Apartments. The ground level continues to serve retail customers.

22 Frederic Hale's First National Bank/Silver King building, its vault still intact, now serves as an art gallery Richard Kletting's Rocky Mountain Telephone Exchange, its brick facade now pitted from sandblasting, houses a restaurant. Frank Andrew's furniture and hardware now houses an art gallery, a restaurant, and a gift shop The city hall continued to house the municipal offices until 1983 It was remodeled and reopened as a museum in 1984, the 100th anniversary of Park City's incorporation The brick buildingjust south of the old city hall, its south wall showing a clear line between pre-fire and postfire construction, served as the city library until 1982. It now houses a clothing store and state liquor store

23 Gary Kimball, "Strong Coffee, Cheap Sex," Park City Lodestar, Winter 1987, p 30; Raye Ringholz, "TheJury Is Still Out," Park City Lodestar, Winter 1988, p 87.