FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSIONER. 1 23 



gale from the south. This carried the fire away from the trenches, beyond 

 the control of the men, and about two o'clock in the afternoon of that day 

 swept down upon the little hamlet of Long Lake West, completely destroy- 

 ing the town and burning over about thirty thousand acres of forest and 

 wild land, extending as far as Cranberry Lake, a distance of nearlv eight 

 miles before it could be checked. A large hotel, the " Wilderness Inn," the 

 railroad station, postoffice, schoolhouse, barns, several dwellings, large 

 store, a yard containing over three million feet of piled lumber, and about 

 thirty freight cars were destroyed. Over seventy people were rescued by 

 the fire train and carried to places of safety. This fire burned the ties and 

 felled telegraph poles, so that the main line of the New York Central Rail- 

 road from Utica to Montreal was forced to abandon its train service part 

 of the distance for two days and operate their trains over the Delaware and 

 Hudson Railroad via Saranac Lake and Plattsburg. This was the most 

 serious fire that ever occurred in the Adirondacks. It is hard to place the 

 exact fire loss on that Sunday, but it is in the neighborhood of $130,000. At 

 the same time fires were raging on Baker and McKenzie Mountains near 

 Saranac Lake and on Haystack Mountain near Lake Placid. There was 

 a bad fire on Fish Pond Mountain in the William Rockefeller preserve. 

 Fires were burning in the vicinity of Tupper Lake, at Wolf Pond, and along 

 the Raquette River near Wawbeek. There were serious fires in the vicinity 

 of Loon Lake, and many along the Chateaugay branch of the Delaware and 

 Hudson Railroad. 



Observers were treated to a beautiful but weird sight on the evening 

 and dark night of September 28th, with a rain storm in suspension, the 

 heavens aglow in so many places and a broad red glare reflected on the black 

 clouds. The old residents nodded their heads and thought the end had been 

 reached Avhen it began to rain. About one and one-half inches of rain fell 

 during the night and the next day. This rain quieted the fires but did not 

 put them out. In many places the flames had burned deep into the duff 

 (the vegetable accumulation of years), and this rain did not reach these 

 fires. As a result this rainfall only checked the surface fires. There was 

 another light rain on October 1st and 2d, but too small (.2 of an inch) to be 

 of any real value. The only criticism that can be made of our firewardens 

 is that some of them, when the rain came on the 28th, thought the severe 

 drought had ended, and that there was no further danger. But a few hot 



