THE GREAT MINNESOTA FIRE 



BY J. F. HAYDEN 



A PRAIRIE fire keeps pace with the wind, but it 

 can be outwitted. Backfiring will open a path to 

 safety. But a forest fire, unchecked by wide fire 

 lanes and fanned by a high wind whose velocity is in- 

 creased by the atmospheric disturbance caused by the 

 fire itself, cannot be avoided nor evaded. Speed counts 

 for little, for flaming brands, carried on the wings of the 

 wind, fly ahead of the fugitive and cut off escape. And 

 when fires break out in many localities at once, as was 

 the case with the fires that raged in several counties 



Here were many settlers making homes on the lands 

 that had been cut over in lumbering operations, and the 

 lives of more than one hundred of them were snuffed 

 out. 



The life and property losses of these previous fires are 

 dwarfed by the latest fire disaster. Lives to the number 

 of fully one thousand have been the sacrifice, and the 

 property loss will probable reach well up toward 

 $100,000,000. Many of those who were overtaken by 

 the raging flames will be listed as "missing," for no 



Photograph by Undenvood and Underwood 



THE PROPERTY LOSS WAS PROBABLY ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS 



Again we might believe this scene in devastated Belgium or tortured France, but it is really the wreck of the big_ trestle between Duluth. 

 Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin. After the railroads ceased to operate, automobiles brought hundreds away from burning farms and towns, but 

 many were trapped and burned to death. 



of northeastern Minnesota, and are still unsubdued, flee- 

 ing settlers can find no haven of safety. 



Take the map of Minnesota and mark the boundaries 

 of an area with Bemidji on the west, Duluth on the east, 

 Hibbing on the north and Brainerd on the south, and 

 you will have roughly the area over which the most 

 recent and the most disastrous holocaust has swept. 



Minnesota has had bad forest fires in the past. The 

 Hinckley fire of the fall of 1894 burned through much 

 good timber, destroyed the towns of Hinckley and Mis- 

 sion Creek and took a toll of more than four hundred 

 lives. Fourteen years later the city of Chisholm was 

 burned and its six thousand residents made homeless. 

 Much timber and other property was destroyed. In 

 1910 the northern counties of the State were fire swept. 



CIS 



vestige of their bodies remains. Dozens of others were 

 burned beyond recognition. 



There have been hints of incendiarism, by a wide- 

 spread plot, but whether by this cause or by careless- 

 ness and lack of protective measures, conditions were 

 such as to make the disaster inevitable once fires started 

 and the wind blew. 



Most of the territory over which the fires swept had, 

 in years past, been denuded of its original forest growth 

 of pine. Small towns had sprung up and settlers had 

 gone into the outlying districts to reclaim homes from 

 the stump lands. Second growth pine, tamarack and 

 hardwood timber remained in many localities, and small 

 mills had been brought in to manufacture it. Swamps 

 had been drained to make farm lands drained to a dry- 



