1894 — Sep 1, Wildfires, Hinckley; also Miller, Pokegama, Sandstone, MN; also WI/>9–445->500

–445->500 Blanchard.*

–>500 Hinckley Fire Museum. “The Great Hinckley Fire.” 2019. Accessed 6-10-2020.**
–~500 Root, James. “The Great Hinckley Fire.” Railroad Stories, V. XXI, N.2, Jan 1937, p.32.
— 476 Bodies recovered. Root. “The Great Hinckley Fire.” Railroad Stories. XXI/2, Jan 1937, p. 32.
–22 Native Americans.
— 450 Hamilton Daily Democrat (OH). “Events of the Year,” Dec 29, 1894, p. 6.
–>445 Brown. Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894. 2006, p. 201.*
–>436 MN [“…somewhat more than 436 people died in Minnesota…”]
— >9 WI [“…another nine, at least {died} in Wisconsin.”]
— <12 WI [“…fewer than a dozen people…”] (Brown 2006, p. 195.) -- 440 History.com. This Day in History, Disaster, Sep 1, 1894. “Minnesota Town Burns.” -- 228 Hinckley. History.com. This Day…Sep 1, 1894. “Minnesota Town Burns.” -->200 Hinckley vicinity. History.com. This…Sep 1, 1894. “Minnesota Town Burns.”
— 418 City of Hinckley. The Great Hinckley Fire of 1894 (webpage). Accessed 11-27-2016.
— 418 Cornell, James. The Great International Disaster Book (Third Edition). 1982, p. 361.
— 418 Forces of Nature, Forest Fires: Five Worst.
— 418 Haines and Sando (USDA). Climatic Conditions Preceding…Great Fires… 1969, p. 2.
— 418 Holbrook. “Inferno at Hinckley,” pp. 79-87 in Kartman & Brown, Disaster! 2007, 87.
–>418 Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “The Great Hinckley Fire 1894.”
— 418 National Fire Protec. Assoc. Spreadsheet on Large Loss of Life Fires (as of Feb 2003).
— 418 National Interagency Fire Center. Historically Significant Wildland Fires. 2007.
— 418 Plummer. Forest Fires: Their Causes, Extent and Effects… 1912, p. 23, Table 3.
— 418 Smalley, James C. (Ed.). Protecting Life and Property from Wildfire, 2005, p. 23.
— 413 Pine County Coroner Dr. Wellington Cowan official toll; noted in Brown, p. 201.***
–314 identified victims.
— 99 unidentifiable victims.
— 248 Hinckley. Number of victims buried in mass burial trenches in Hinckley. (Brown, p202.)
–127 Entire group seeking refuge in high-grass area once a swamp. Brown 2006, pp. 78-79.
— ~30 Pokegama, Pine Co. White & Yocum-Stans. “The 1894 fire destroys Brook Park…” 8-15-2019.

* On the low-end of our death toll range (445): We are unsure of the derivation of 418 as the “official” death toll. Brown (2006, p. 201) cites the Pine County Coroner as to 413 deaths. This number, as Brown points out, did not include 23 Native Americans who died near Mille Lacs Lake nor the 9-11 who died in Wisconsin, nor any of the unknowns whose “bodies continued to be found at random times and in random circumstances for months and years after the fire” (p. 202). When we add the known 413 Pine County deaths, the 23 Natives, and at least 9 Wisconsin deaths we derive 445 deaths. For the high-end of our death toll (>500) we rely or the estimate of the Hinckley Fire Museum, including “hundreds of Native Americans.” Given the unknown, but likely larger-than-23 number of Native Americans who lost their lives, as well as “others who were never found” (Hinckley Fire Museum), we are of the opinion that it is quite possible that over five hundred people died in the wildfires.

**Our number. Webpage notes: “The official death toll was 418, not counting hundreds of Native Americans [our emphasis] who lived in and around the town and others who were never found.”

***Brown: “But the list did not include the twenty-three Native Americans found near Mille Lacs Lake, nor an unknown number of Native Americans, trappers, loggers, hunters, and itinerants who happened to be in the woods that day and who simply vanished with no one to mourn for them or to report them missing. Their bodies continued to be found at random times and in random circumstances for months and years after the fire.” (Brown 2006, p. 202.) We [Blanchard] think it fair to say that the Pine Country, MN coroner’s list also would not have included any Wisconsin deaths either.

Narrative Information

Brown: “When I began my research for this book, what came to light quickly astonished me. I discovered that what my grandfather had experiences [a survivor] was far from an ordinary forest fire. Ordinary forest fires move in fits and starts. They give people a chance to get out of their way [not always]. This fire afforded no such opportunity. It came on faster than a man could flee – even on horseback or even, as it turned out, on a train. As the onrushing wave of fire broke over Hinckley, the winds that propelled it reached hurricane strength and flames towered 200 feet over the surrounding forest. Enormous bubbles of glowing gas drifted in over the town and then suddenly ignited over the heads of the town’s terrified citizens, raining fire down on their heads. Fire whirls – tornadoes of fire – danced out ahead of the main fire, knocking down buildings and carrying flaming debris thousands of feet into the red-and-black sky. Temperatures at the core of the fire soared above 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, the melting point of steel, quickly cremating people who had been alive only minutes before.” (Brown, Daniel James. Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894. 2006, p. x.)

“When the firestorm hit Sandstone, a little after 5:15 p.m., it rubbed the town off the sandstone bluff on which it sat in mere minutes. As at Hinckley, huge flaming bubbles of gas floated in over the town before the main fire arrived, exploding over the heads of terrified onlookers, raining fire down on their heads and setting both people and buildings on fire. Minutes later, the flaming front rolled through the streets, traveling on the ground but rising more than a hundred feet into the sky. Since leaving the remains of Hinckley in its tracks, the fire had surged unimpeded across nine miles of dense, new-growth pine forests and tinder-dry slash, traveling over gradually rising ground. It was more than ten miles wide now. With near hurricane-force winds propelling it forward, it hit Sandstone even more savagely than it had hit Hinckley.

“It was as if a gigantic blowtorch had been suddenly turned on the town. Along First Street, dozens of people ran out of their homes and businesses and were simply incinerated before they could run 100 feet. Out at the waterworks, August Swenson and his boy jumped into the well inside the pump house, but almost immediately the flaming walls of the building were blown in, collapsing on them. In the cellar of his house, where he and his wife and two children had taken shelter, Frank Anderson began to dig frantically at the earthen walls with his bare hands as the house above exploded in flames. He was able to excavate only a few inches before the fire sucked the oxygen out of the cellar and he and his family suffocated….” (Brown 2006, pp. 113-114.)

“By 5:50 p.m., the ferocity of the fire at Sandstone began to ebb, but there was still tremendous heat in the air and in the rocks. The roughly two hundred survivors huddled in the cold Kettle River were astonished when they heard sharp cracking sounds from the cliffs across the river. Wave after wave of superheated air slamming into it had fractured the rock face of the eastern cliff, and it was exfoliating, layers of it peeling off like so much dead skin from a badly burned body.” (Brown 2006, p. 120.)

“Far to the south, in Pokegama, C. W. Kelsey, his hands badly burned, crawled back up the ladder and peered over the rim of his well shortly before 6:00 p.m. For as far as he could see, everything combustible – his house, the woods, the town, the railroad trestle – was gone, simply licked off the face of the early….He and his family climbed out of the well and made their way to the millpond, where twenty-three of their fellow villagers were just pulling themselves out onto the ashen banks. Everyone here had survived, though many were badly burned….

“But on his farm, Fred Molander was dead of asphyxiation at the bottom of his well, his body not to be found for another six weeks. The charred body of Molander’s wife was in the ashes of their house, holding two smaller blackened corpses. In a field on Molander’s farm, near a set of iron tires, a bi of burned harness, and the charred remains of two horses, Jay Braman lay dead. Eighteen other bodies lay scattered across the stark, black-and-gram landscape around Pokegama….” (Brown 2006, pp. 124-125.)

“Outside Sandstone, Oliver Dubois climbed out of his well and began to stumble into town to see what had happened. The smoke had begun to lift and it was light enough that he could make out the remains of the streets among the ashes. And he could make out the bodies, dozens of them scattered up and down the streets in front of what had been their homes….he began to make his way down the wagon road toward the river. Along the way he counted what he reckoned to be fifty bodies….” (Brown 2006, p. 126.)

“At 6:48 p.m., the sun set over Pine County, and the fire’s advance began to slow dramatically. The low-pressure system that in the morning had squatted over northern Iowa and Manitoba moved eastward over Ontario and eastern Minnesota, and the rapidly cooling atmosphere began to weigh on the fire, knocking down the convection column and slowly smothering the flaming front like an enormous blanket applied from above….And with that, the fire finally curled up and lay down. The thing that it had been, it no longer was. It shattered into thousands upon thousands of smaller things, things burning and burned, within an oval ring of flames sprawling across much of Pine County. The ring stretched roughly thirty-four miles from north to south, sixteen miles from east to west….Within it, across almost five hundred square miles of burned-over land, hundreds of thousands of burning trees and stumps sparkled like constellations of stars in a black night sky….”
(Brown 2006, pp. 134-135.)

“By midmorning Tuesday [Sep 4], reporters from major cities all across the Midwest and the East as well as from the national wire services began to arrive in Hinckley by the trainload….With most of the bodies from the village and from the swamp across the rive r now accounted for, much of the reporters’ attention focused on the millpond [where it turned out there were no bodies]….

“More than four hundred bodies had already been recovered from Hinckley, Sandstone, and the surrounding country….” (pp. 181-182.)

“The dead continued to make appearances in unexpected places for weeks and months to come…Eighteen bodies lay scattered along the bed of Mission Creek, north of what had been the village of the same name. In John Westlund’s cellar south of Sandstone, searchers found the bodies of Mrs. Westlund, Mrs. Henry Lind, Sophie Wacke, and all eight of their children. Near Opstead, on the eastern shore of Mille Lacs Lake, twenty-five miles northeast of Hinckley, a hunting party found the remains of twenty-three Native Americans. The bodies – men, women, and children – were scattered along ten miles of trail, stretching from their summer camp on Shadridge Creek to the spot where the fire had finally overtaken the last of them as they had tried to outrun it….

In Pokegama, Fred Molander had been missing for over a month before someone finally found him at the bottom of his own well. The bodies of three young women – prostitutes from Emma Hammond’s brothel east of Hinckley – were found and buried where they had fallen, in a field belonging to John Patrick….” (p. 189.)

“…in Barronett [Washburn County, WI]…the mill and the entire town were gone, but for one house. Among the ashes they [mill survivors] found the body of one of their coworkers, Aleck Erickson, lying facedown in the street, a few feet from what had been his front door.

“The fires rolled on [in WI], threatening, damaging, or devastating one town after another. Comstock [Barron Co.] was completely destroyed. Cable [Bayfield Co.], a town of two hundred, lost thirteen houses and a railroad building. Mason [Bayfield Co.], with five- to six hundred residents, was almost completely burned to the ground along with the White River Lumber Company’s mill and thirty-three million board feet of lumber. On Lake Superior, Washburn [Bayfield Co.] lost four large lumber docks and fifteen million board feet of lumber. Parishville lost 500,000 feet of lumber along with the Kennedy Lumber Mill. Only dynamite saved the rest of the town. Iron River [Bayfield Co.], a town of seven hundred, barely escaped with the loss of twenty homes and a sawmill. Granite Lake [Barron Co.] was destroyed. And on and on.

“By the end of the day, fewer than a dozen people were dead, but many more towns had been severely threatened, damaged, or entirely destroyed, among them Prentice [Price Co.], Winchester [Vilas Co.] Fifield [Price Co.] Park Falls [Price], Butternut, Glidden, Miller, High Bridge, Plummer, Hurley, Gile, Saxon, Odanah, Sanborn, Marengo, Sedgwick, Bayfield, Houghton, Ashland Junction, Moquah, Ino, Poplar, Itasca, Pratt, Agnew, Altamount, and finally – agonizingly – the small portion of Phillips that had been rebuilt since July 27.” [p. 195]

City of Hinckley: “On Saturday, September 1, 1894 between the hours of 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m., a great firestorm consumed and destroyed Hinckley and 5 smaller communities, namely Mission Creek, Sandstone, Miller, Partridge and Pokegama.

“Picture a land covered with giant pines, some hardwoods, many swamps and small rivers; a virgin land untouched. Then, in 1870 the lumbering companies arrived and many lumbering camps, saw mills, railroads and finally villages developed. The area around Hinckley prospered and Hinckley incorporated in 1885. By 1894, Hinckley grew to a population of nearly 1400.

“Over the years, lumbermen had reaped the best of the timber. Left was the ground choked with limbs and stumps from the trees that the loggers had felled. The slashings lay where they fell getting dryer and dryer each year. The summer of 1894 was extremely hot and dry. Little rain had fallen over a period of three months and conditions were ripe for fires. Many small fires had been set from the sparks of the many trains passing through and lumber companies routinely set fires to clear their slashings. The air was constantly hazy from the smoke.

“September 1st would have gone by as had each day before except for certain conditions. there were an unusual number of small scattered fires and a temperature inversion covered the entire area keeping the atmosphere filled with smoke and haze. About 10:00 that morning a breeze sprang up out of the southwest fanning the smoldering fires into open flames and creating fires large enough to break through the inversion and reach the cooler air on top. With the cooler air feeding down into many fires now raging, the wind and fire became fierce. As people fought the multiple fires, it soon became apparent that it was a losing battle. By mid-afternoon, a gigantic wall of flame developed as the smaller fires, fed by the wind and cool air combined into a racing cyclonic fury.

“As the fire consumed its territory, 418 people perished in Hinckley and the surrounding communities. The fire left a path of death and destruction too horrible to believe. About 28 people killed in Pokegama (now Brook Park) and about 80 perished from the Sandstone area. The fire covered 400 square miles consuming nearly everything in its path. It was impossible to outrun the wall of flame. Many tried but perished. People were saved in the Grindstone River and in a water filled gravel pit in the center of Hinckley. Two trains, the Eastern Minnesota (a division of the Great Northern) and the St. Paul & Duluth Railroad (later Northern Pacific) were instrumental in saving many lives. The heroic courage of the engineers of these trains saved hundreds of lives as they took survivors to Superior and Duluth where the two cities prepared to feed and house those that escaped. The panic massive exodus which occurred as hundreds fled the fire separated many of the families and in many cases it was several days of anxious worry and waiting until they knew if their loved ones were alive and safe.

“Those that somehow survived in water holes, potato fields, or by some other miracle were in very poor condition. Their lungs were burned from the hot air, their eyes swollen shut from the smoke and their arms and legs badly burned and blistered. Many of the survivors were in shock.

“One of the many heroes of this tragedy was the telegrapher stationed at the St. Paul and Duluth Depot in Hinckley. Tommy Dunn remained loyal to his post and waited for orders. Eventually the very tracks the trains traveled on burned and no orders came. The young telegrapher perished in the fire. He had been determined to save the people of this area. His last know message that he tapped out on his key to the agent in Barnum was “I think I’ve stayed too long” Tommy Dunn had waited until it was too later for his own escape.

“Following the fire, a group of seven brave men dared to venture out from the gravel pit where they had been saved and made their way on foot to Pine City which had not been touched by the fire. As that community was awakened by the horrifying news, they immediately prepared a train loaded with medicine, food and clothing. The train was on its way by 10:00 p.m. that night. Help also came from the north bringing doctors and supplies to what remained of Hinckley.

“Before the fire, Hinckley was a prospering town and was well known as the “hub” of the lumbering industry in Minnesota. Two major railroads brought up to 22 trains a day through the town. Thanks to the courage and determination of a small group of local men, it was decided to rebuild Hinckley. Relief housing was set up immediately by the State and Hinckley was reborn out of the ashes. After the fire, the huge Hinckley depot was rebuilt exactly as it had been before the fire. Today it houses the Hinckley Fire Museum that tells in detail the story of the Great Hinckley Fire of 1894.

“Just to the east of town is the Hinckley Fire Monument which memorializes the 418 people that died. Beneath it are the four trenches where 248 victims are buried….” (City of Hinckley. The Great Hinckley Fire of 1894 (webpage).)

History.com: “The town of Hinckley, Minnesota, is destroyed by a forest fire on this day in 1894. A total of 440 people died in the area.

“The upper Midwest was particularly vulnerable to devastating fires at the end of the 19th century as European settlers cleared the land for agriculture and timber and new railroad lines were built through heavily wooded areas. Hinckley was a new lumber and rail town built along the Grindstone River in Minnesota near the Wisconsin border. The town’s settlers felled trees for lumber using slash cutting techniques that left behind large amounts of wood debris—excellent fire fuel. Further, they set up lumber yards very close to the rail lines. This proved a dangerous combination when sparks from trains set the wood debris ablaze.

“In the summer of 1894, drought conditions in the Upper Midwest made a deadly fire even more likely. On the afternoon of September 1, fires near two rail lines south of Hinckley broke out and spread north. As the raging fire reached the town’s train depot, 350 of the townspeople got on a train to escape. The train had to pass right through flames, but reached safety in West Superior, Wisconsin.

“Other Hinckley residents sought refuge in the swamps near town, but many in this group were killed, some from drowning. About 100 other residents fled to a gravel pit fill with water; most managed to survive. A train that was entering Hinckley from the north reversed direction to avoid the blaze, but still caught fire. The only survivors were those who managed to jump from the train into a lake.

“In all, 300,000 acres of town and forest burned in the fire, causing about $25 million in damages. In Hinckley, 228 people died. More than 200 others in the surrounding areas also perished, including 23 Ojibwa natives.” (History.com. This Day in History, Disaster, Sep 1, 1894. “Minnesota Town Burns.”)

MN Dept. Natural Resources: “…the Great Hinckley Fire of 1894…burned a phenomenal 350,000 acres or more than 400 squares miles. Unfortunately, that is not the worst of it. The fire also took the lives of at least 418 men, women, and children. Countless pets, livestock, and wildlife were also lost.

“Weather. From 1891 to 1894, the St. Paul Weather Bureau documented a steady loss of soil moisture in central Minnesota. This loss continued throughout the summer of 1894. Barely 2 inches of rain fell between May of that year and September 1, the day that made history. Fires had been burning all summer, not uncommon at the time. A haze had been present throughout those hot days as far south as St. Paul, with the smell of smoke everywhere. What was worse for townsfolk though, was the unending dust that was stirred up with every footfall.

“Fateful Day. September 1 was just another Saturday, filled with domestic and farm chores, unless a fellow was employed at the Brennan Lumber Company, by far the largest employer in town. The company site spread out across 36 acres. Huge sawdust piles were ubiquitous, as was the 28 million board feet of cut and stacked lumber. In addition, logs soon to enter the mill were piled high too, for 200,000 board feet of lumber was cut in an average day.

“By noon the wind had picked up. It was so strong that Duluth pedestrians were assaulted by ashes and cinders and the air felt like furnace blasts. By late afternoon, it was dark enough that lights were turned on across the city. Duluth was more than 70 miles from the fire front. An inversion was present, the hot air trapped by cooler air above it. Between the temperature climbing to 90 degrees, strong winds, lack of humidity, and the inversion, the perfect storm had been created. The converging fire first destroyed the towns of Mission Creek and Brook Park before hitting Hinckley. Upon arrival, the fire was a solid wall to the south, east, and west.

“Fire’s Force. “Two fires managed to join together to make one large fire with flames that licked through the inversion finding the cool air above. That air came rushing down into the fires to create a vortex or tornado of flames which then began to move quickly and grew larger and larger turning into a fierce firestorm,” as stated by the Hinckley Museum. Flames reached heights of 200 feet. Flaming debris was sent thousands of feet into the air due to the convection column. Fire whirls moved ahead of the main fire, touching down randomly and exploding into new fires. Horizontal vortices rolled forward with such speed that horses were unable to outrun it. Even the trains had difficulty staying ahead of the fire. Once the Brennan mill caught on fire, all hope was lost. According to the New York Times, “not only was every green and living thing licked up by the flames, but the soil itself was blackened and consumed, and the earth torn up in great holes and patches.” Temperatures at the core of the fire were over 1,600 degree Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt barrels of nails and fuse railcar wheels to the tracks.

“The Human Cost. People survived any way they could. Some climbed into wells, many suffocating due to lack of oxygen, but a lucky few survived. Some endured the fire in the middle of potato fields, while 300 others hunkered down in 18 inches of water and mud in Skunk Lake, beating out flames that caught on clothing. Many took refuge in the gravel pit, an eyesore and bone of contention in Hinckley, until that fateful day. Human and property losses were staggering. The Brennan mill alone suffered $600,000 in losses with the total between $3 million and $5 million, not counting the huge loss of the timber resource. It was not until May 1898 that the last victim of the fire was discovered. The death toll was probably much higher than the official estimate provided in the fire’s aftermath. The outpouring of compassion for the survivors was unparalleled, with contributions arriving from all corners of the country. The fire also precipitated the hiring of the first chief fire warden in Minnesota, General C.C. Andrews.” (Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “The Great Hinckley Fire 1894.”)

Root: “Like a nightmare it comes back to me, the Hinckley forest fire of September, 1894. It was, I believe, the greatest tragedy of its kind in American history: 2,500 square miles burned out, mostly in Minnesota, partly in Wisconsin, and a death list of about 500 men, women and children. The exact number will never by known; 476 bodies were recovered, including the remains of twenty-two Indians, before the snows of winter put an end to further search.

“At that time I was pulling the Duluth Limited on the old St. Paul & Duluth Railway (now part of the Northern Pacific). In those days, unlike it is today, lumbering was the one big industry of the North Woods county – lumbering, farming and railroading….In the deep forests were log cabins, each with its little patch of cleared land; and along the fright-of-way of the railways little clusters of frame houses were growing into fair-sized towns.

“One of these towns was Hinckley, 72 miles northeast of St. Paul. It had about 1,200 inhabitants, one-third of whom were regularly employed by a large lumber plant there….Hinckley was the crossing point for…two rail lines.

“The day of the big fire was Saturday, September 1, 1894. No rain had fallen in northern Minnesota since April. Maples, pines, oaks and tamaracks were parched like tinder; rivers had dwindled into streams, and streams into dry gullies; sloughs in which the wild water fowl usually fed had become dry, cracked mud; and over the whole countryside was thrown a mantle of dust. For months, fires had broken out here and there, so that the atmosphere for many miles around was blue with a haze of smoke; but so far none of the fires had been serious.

“At 2 p.m., two hours late, the northbound Limited stopped at Hinckley on its way from St. Paul to Duluth. The forest fire was creeping closer minute by minute, but the residents of the town weren’t afraid; they had not yet seen the flames, so only a handful of them climbed aboard the northbound train.

“But forty minutes later things had changed, and when the local freight train that ran between Duluth and Hinckley on the Eastern Minnesota Railway pulled into town, the curtain of smoke was so dense that it darkened the whole community. A wall of flame was closing in from the west, south and east. Balls of fire were tossed from the top of one tall tree to another, breaking into showers of sparks that spread the blaze with lightning rapidity. The local fire department was already fighting the flames on the extreme western corner of the town. Their equipment was pitifully inadequate. One frame house after another on the edge of town burst into flames.

“The local freight, pulled by Engineer Ed Barry, arrived with thirty empties and ten loaded cars. Its crew waited for the southbound passenger train on the E. M., which arrived at 3:25. Then the two crews made up a combination train of five passenger coaches, three box cars, a caboose, and two engines.

“The frenzied population of Hinckley mobbed this train just as an overpowering heat wave hit the town. Men, women and children, even animals, dropped dead in the streets. The smoke was suffocating; the streets as dark as midnight. Engineer Barry waited at the depot for three quarters of an hour for stragglers to get aboard. Then he crossed the bridge over the little river, and delayed five minutes more. But the ties were burning now, the cars were blistering and smoldering. If they did not pull out now they could never go. So without waiting for anyone else to climb aboard, Barry pulled out.

“All this time I was on my way from Duluth to St. Paul, at the throttle of the southbound limited, rapidly approaching Hinckley but now knowing then what was happening. Although it was later that I learned the facts about the mixed train, I’ll tell them now. Barry opened the throttle wide, despite the dangerous condition of the track, determined to make a run for it or die in the attempt. His train crossed nineteen bridges, most of them burning.

“On all sides the flames were beating against the train and into the engine cab; smoke was threatening to suffocate all the human beings who had escaped so far. On account of the darkness, Barry kept his headlight burning; even at that it was difficult to see a few yards ahead.

“Reaching the next town, Sandstone, they begged the local population to climb aboard while there was yet time. Only a few did so. The feeling in Sandstone was that even if the flames did engulf Hinckley, nine miles away, Sandstone would still be safe. A few minutes after the train pulled out the people had good reason to regret their overconfidence.

“At Partridge a twenty-minute stop was made. Passengers dying of thirst were given water. Engineer Barry was handed a telegraph message to use his own judgment in running the train. The citizens of Partridge, like those of Sandstone, refused to desert their town. Later, they, too, regretted it. Partridge was wiped out, as were Hinckley and Sandstone. Again at Mansfield and Kerrick the special stopped; each time the same performance was repeated.

“At Kerrick the engineer decided to quit; smoke had blinded his eyes so that he could not trust himself to run the train. But a slight delay cleared them a bit, and he went on again, not stopping until he had pulled his train safely into West Superior. Then he collapsed.

“Meanwhile, as I’ve said, our southbound limited had left Duluth. I was at the throttle, Tom Sullivan was conductor, and Jack McGowan was fireman. When we left Duluth (2 p.m.) we were on time, and we were practically on time when we got to the top of the hill at Hinckley. We had been running through smoke so thick and dense that Brakeman Monihan had lighted the lamps in the coaches. I had the cab lamp lit, but as we reached the hill the smoke cleared and it was broad daylight again and we blew the lights out.

“Then I saw people coming from both sides of the track and across the bridge. I applied the air and stopped. Just then an old woman and her two daughters came along. They were so excited they couldn’t tell me anything, but kept saying: ‘For God’s sake, save us!’ People kept coming and getting into the cars on both sides. I recognized a man named Bartlett and his wife, and asked them what the trouble was. He replied: ‘Jim, everybody is burned out and everything is burning at Hinckley.’

“The depot was on fire, and so was the bridge. I told the people to hurry onto the train, for I was going to run them back to Skunk Lake.

“Just as I spoke, everything seemed to let go; the wind rose; there seemed to be an explosion; and in an instant the whole train, even to the ties, was ignited – all in less time than it takes a man to snap his finger. I had hardly taken my seat when the heavy glass in the cab window at my side bent over toward me and burst. The glass was carried to the top of the cab over my head and as it came down it landed on me and cut me quite severely, although at the time I had no idea I was hurt at all.

“As we got into the cut on the top of Big Hinckley Hill I heard somebody calling. Three men were coming toward the train. I applied the air at first thinking of taking them on; but a second thought told me it would not do to stop in the cut, as the fire would surely burn a hole in our air hose and set us there. So I released the air and we pulled out. Two of the men caught onto the pilot as we went by. One of them remained there a short time, then fell off and was burned to death. The other went through all right and survived. I never could figure how he was able to hold onto that pilot.

“Then I must have passed out, myself. The next thing I recollect is that we reached what we called Little Hinckley Hill: was then lying on the deck of the engine with one foot on the quadrant, the other on the firebox door. I was alone in the cab. Vaguely I wondered what had hap¬pened to my fireman.

“My engine had slackened her speed and was going very slow. Looking up at the gage I saw she had ninety pounds of steam. Then I pulled myself up, opened the throt¬tle and sat on the seat again. At that moment Jack showed himself. He was down in the water, wholly in the tank! I began to get dizzy again. Jack must have noticed it; he threw. water- over me. It felt good. I told him my hands were cooked…. I thrust my swollen hands into the water; it relieved the pain and revived me….

“I saw some water in a ditch at the side of the track. I knew we must have reached Skunk Lake, as there wasn’t another drop of water within miles. I applied the air and stopped. I found we were right on the bridge, so I pulled the reverse lever to a forward motion and pulled ahead a car-length or two. Then I fell to the deck of the engine. Jack wanted to help me, but I said I was all right and for him to get the passengers out into the water.

“The cars were all blazing, both inside and out. I learned later that all of their win¬dows had been broken by the heat. There were about 30o passengers aboard. Just before reaching Skunk Lake a dozen or more had gone mad and leaped off the train. More of them probably would have done so, especially the ladies, but for the fact that our porter, John Blair, went through one of the coaches with a fire extinguisher, squirting it on ladies’ dresses wherever he saw they had caught fire.

“In a few minutes Jack came back, and he and another man helped me out of the engine. As soon as I struck the ground rolled into -the water and -lay there for three hours, and all of the passengers and the crew were in the water beside us – 430 men, women and children. On the other side of the track was a larger body of water, also part of Skunk Lake. There were people in that, too, although nobody could see across the track at that time.

“There we sat. A few horses and cows had followed us into the lake, and a few deer, a couple of timber wolves, a black bear and other wild and domestic animals, all cowering and suffering there in the .water with us. One girl said later there was a big snake curled up beside her….

“The flames burned for more than five days after Hinckley was destroyed, until they were quenched by a much belated rain which began falling on the sixth of Sep¬tember. And for months afterward parties of woodsmen and trappers would come across. the bodies of victims in the big woods of upper Minnesota and Wisconsin, ugly reminders of the horror, the suffering and heroism of the great Hinckley fire.” (Root, James. “The Great Hinckley Fire.” Railroad Stories, Vol. XXI, No. 2, Jan 1937, pp. 32-36.)

Smalley: “On September 1, 1894, the Hinckley Fire in Minnesota killed 418 people. This fire followed a protracted spring and summer drought. Very hot weather, moderate winds, and very low humidity at the time of this fire allowed many uncontrolled settler and logging fires burning through the months of July and August to blow up. The fire burned through large areas of slash from logging and land clearing operations. Both cut and uncut areas burned, resulting in extensive timber damage.” (Smalley, J. C. (Ed.). Protecting Life and Property from Wildfire, 2005, p. 23.)

Newspaper

Sep 2: “The towns of Hinckley, Pokegama and Mission Creek destroyed by forest fires; over 450 lives lost and many injured.” (Hamilton Daily Democrat (OH). “Events of the Year,” Dec 29, 1894, p. 6.)
Sources

Brown, Daniel James. Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2006.

City of Hinckley, MN. The Great Hinckley Fire of 1894 (webpage). Accessed 11-27-2016 at: http://www.hinckley.govoffice2.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=%7BFD8DC19D-5036-4403-8C87-061FFE2E781A%7D

Cornell, James. The Great International Disaster Book (Third Edition). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982.

Forces of Nature. Forest Fires: Five Worst Forest Fires. Accessed September 15, 2008 at: http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/forestfires/tenworst.shtml

Haines, Donald A. and Rodney W. Sando. Climatic Conditions Preceding Historically Great Fires in the North Central Region (USDA Forest Service Research Paper NC-34). St. Paul MN: North Central Forest Experiment Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1969, 23 pages. Accessed at: http://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/rp/rp_nc034.pdf

Hamilton Daily Democrat, OH. “Events of the Year.” 12-29-1894, p. 6. Accessed at: http://www.newspaperarchive.com/FullPagePdfViewer.aspx?img=71970899

Hinckley Fire Museum. “A wall of fire four and a half miles high.” 2019. Accessed 6-10-2020 at: http://hinckleyfiremuseum.com/

History.com. This Day in History, Disaster, September 1, 1894. “Minnesota Town Burns.” Accessed at: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&displayDate=09/01&categoryId=disaster

Holbrook, Stewart H. “Inferno at Hinckley,” pp. 79-87 in Kartman, Ben and Leonard Brown (eds.), Disaster! 2007. Partially digitized by Google at: http://books.google.com/books?id=lynBIKvEDBQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “The Great Hinckley Fire 1894.” Accessed 11-27-2016 at: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/forestry/anniversary/hinkleyfire.html

National Fire Protection Association. Spreadsheet on Large Loss of Life Fires (as of Feb 2003). (Email attachment to B. W. Blanchard from Jacob Ratliff, NFPA Archivist/Taxonomy Librarian, 7-8-2013.)

National Interagency Fire Center. Historically Significant Wildland Fires. Accessed 6-9-2020 at: https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_histSigFires.html

Plummer, Fred G. Forest Fires: Their Causes, Extent and Effects, with a Summary of Recorded Destruction and Loss (U.S. Forest Service Bulletin 117). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1912. Accessed 6-9-2020 at: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Forest_Fires/3FcDAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Forest+Fires:++Their+Causes,+Extent,+and+Effects,+With+a+Summary+of+Recorded+Destruction+and+Loss.&printsec=frontcover

Root, James. “The Great Hinckley Fire.” Railroad Stories, Vol. XXI, No. 2, Jan 1937, pp. 32-36.

Smalley, James C. (Ed.). Protecting Life and Property from Wildfire. Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association, 2005. Partially digitized by Google at: http://books.google.com/books?id=2913l73SEAUC&dq=Wildfire+1910&source=gbs_navlinks_s

White, Alanea and Jennifer Yocum-Stans. “The 1894 fire destroys Brook Park, Mission Creek.” Pine City Pioneer, 8-15-2019. Accessed 6-10-2020 at: http://www.pinecitymn.com/news/the-1894-fire-destroys-brook-park-mission-creek/article_137c18e8-bec5-11e9-8d98-077dc5f8559b.html