The Great Peshtigo Fire

Few people are aware that on the same day as the infamous Chicago Fire a far more devastating fire occurred only a few hundred miles north of Chicago. The Peshtigo Fire tragically killed at least 1,152 people in Wisconsin— four times as many as the Chicago Fire— and became North America’s worst forest fire in history.

• The town of Peshtigo is located in northern Wisconsin. There were more than 2,500 people living in the heavily wooded area in 1871, most of them connected in one way or another to the area's 60 logging camps. Peshtigo's economy revolved around the production of timber, and their sawmills were constantly producing logs and lumber for shipment to distant areas of the central U.S.

• The town itself was constructed entirely of its plentiful supply of wood. When loggers finished working in one area they would leave behind huge stacks of logging slash, and sawmills amassed large mountains of leftover sawdust. The banks of rivers were lined with logs that had been cut but could not be floated downstream because the drought had left river levels too low. Farmers had cut trees to clear fields and dragged them off to the edge where they lay in large piles.

• The year of 1871 was one of unprecedented drought. It had rained on July 8th and there was a light sprinkle on September 5th, but otherwise no rain fell that entire summer. The previous winter had been very dry as well, with far less than the normal four feet of snowfall. Many local streams had gone dry and the swamps dried up, becoming highly combustible peat.

• The use of fire was considered an essential tool. Loggers burned their slash; railroads burned their right-of-ways; settlers and farmers burned their fields and clearings. Because the summer had been so dry, many people held off their burning and waited for fall rains to lessen the fire danger. After a short rain on September 5th, some people began setting fires. Afterwards, a number of uncontrolled fires popped up as the rain stopped, and some began to spread.

• People took the fires in stride. Barrels of water had been placed on street corners, the church bell served as a fire alarm, and the townfolk responded to its peal to douse any fires too close to town. There was a general confidence that any spreading fires could be contained and extinguished safely, and folks continued to dutifully keep their burnings under control.

THE BUILD-UP

• On October 8, 1871, the temperature in Peshtigo was 83°F. A temperature inversion was hanging over the area that day with an upper layer of colder air trapping the warm air underneath, causing the fires to burn slowly. But when a column of rapidly rising hot air finally became strong enough to break through the inversion layer, the situation quickly changed. The hot air rapidly swooped upwards through the hole as if a furnace damper had been opened. As the hot air rushed up, the cooler air swept in from all sides, quickly fanning small fires into large flaming infernos.

• There is a convection column above every fire, as heated air swirls upward. If two fires are burning near each other, their convection columns can be drawn together so violently that a “tornado” of fire is created. In extreme cases these whirlwinds can sometimes reach half a mile across with winds up to 200 mph. Superheated gasses kill everything, and fire-brands are flung for miles in all directions.

• By 8:30 pm on October 8, there was a glow in the southwest and a low moaning growing louder. At 9:30 pm the wind began to blow hard.

PANIC

• Peshtigo residents had been dealing with fires for weeks and did not think that this one was going to be any worse than the many that had preceded it. A team of men was stationed west of the town with shovels and water pails. But then burning embers began raining down, soon followed by fireballs of flaming chunks. By 10:00 pm, fullblown panic had set in. The men in town dropped their shovels and ran to their homes to locate their families. Within a few minutes, the wind was blowing so fiercly that people found it difficult to stand. Within half an hour after the first building caught fire, the entire town was engulfed by raging, wind-driven flames. By 10:30 pm, the entire town was gone.

AS PESHTIGO BURNED

• When the local priest heard the roar of the approaching fire, he feverishly began to dig a ditch next to the church while loggers continued to get drunk in a nearby saloon and curious neighbors looked on. There was a party going on in the house next door as he worked. Six of the eight in attendance were dead before morning. Father Pernin filled his trench with valuables from the church and hastily covered them with dirt. He filled his wagon with more things and headed to the river. He hauled the wagon himself because he had let his horse go free to try to save itself. He dragged the wagon into the river. Father Pernin survived after spending five hours overnight in the water.

• Many people were sheltering in the boardinghouse, which was the most substantial building in the town. The only fire truck in town was just beginning to wet the building down when the fire arrived. At 10:05 it collapsed, killing those inside. G. J. Tisdale was in the boardinghouse when it caught fire. He ran out the door and as he stepped off the porch, the wind blew him across the yard. He got up and ran for the river, and was knocked flat by the raging wind several times. He survived.

• A lumberjack had been nursing a friend who was bedridden with a fever. The man carried his sick friend outdoors, dug a trench, laid him in it, covered him with dirt, and then ran for the river. He never made it. The sick friend lived; the lumberjack died.

• Logs floating in the river caught fire and burned to the water line. A cow came swimming downstream, and clinging to the horns was a five-year-old girl. Someone reached out and grabbed her. The bridge burned and collapsed, killing several who clung to it. Some who sought refuge in the river couldn’t swim and drowned. Some were badly injured by floating logs and gored by swimming cattle. But without the river, it is likely that few of Peshtigo’s residents would have survived at all.

• Those who could not reach the safety of the river headed for plowed ground, fields, or gardens. 21 women and children huddled under a single large quilt in a field. Their fathers stayed in the open, continually wetting down the blanket. All the men died. The women and children survived.

• In September, Abraham Bush had started plowing circles of land around his house, forming a firebreak. His neighbors dismissed him as foolish. When the fire swept in, he and his family laid wet blankets on the roof of his home, continually soaking them as they dried. He was one of the few people who still had a house after the fire. Several dozen survivors joined him there on October 9.

• Lovell Reed and his relatives fought to save their home until the battle became too desperate. Deciding that suicide was preferable to death by fire, he pulled out his pocketknife and plunged it twice into his chest, trying to hit his heart. Fortunately, his knowledge of anatomy was lacking and he was surprised to find himself still alive. He ran to a creek, rolled in mud, and ultimately survived.

• All that remained of Peshtigo was the iron portions of two locomotives, several brick kilns, the stone walls of the engine and boiler rooms of the woodenware factory, and one house made of still-green timbers that had just been built. □ (Related story on page 5.)