56 Report of the Forest Commission. 



There is no such place as the village of Mission Creek. A lonely log cabin, 

 a half dismantled slab " shack " and acres of cinders are all there is of it. 

 Where the great lumber mills were there is a warped engine and a tangle of 

 half -melted iron smokestacks. The switch yard is marked by the burned car 

 wheels and trucks. The tracks are tangled and twisted like snakes. A few 

 disconsolate lumbermen, with hair and eyebrows singed, linger about the 

 place. A few cows, some of them blind and their hoofs burned off, hobble 

 through the ashes. 



Mission Creek has no place in the map of Minnesota to-day. 



Hinckley's Day of Mourning. 



Three miles further north was Hinckley. There were something like 160 

 funerals in Hinckley to-day, or, rather, one great funeral over 160 bodies. 

 Hinckley had 1,200 souls, and it was here the fire did its most awful work. It 

 was here that the Duluth limited was caught and burned to the wheels. It 

 was here that the crazed population rushed into the Sandstone river or the 

 muck of Skunk lake — some to die by drowning, some to suffocate in the 

 mud, more to be eaten up by the fire, a few to make miraculous escapes. 

 Hinckley was the pivot on which this fiery whirlpool revolved over 600 miles 

 of pine forest, farms and towns. 



This is Hinckley to day : Two railway tracks in ashes, a wooden round- 

 house, a water tank and a tool-house. The fire jumped these buildings, but 

 it left nothing else in Hinckley. One can follow the plan of the town by the 

 straight lines of ashes crossing each other at right angles. These were the 

 sidewalks. Inside them are higher heaps which marked the buildings . The 

 brick walls of the schoolhouse are standing. It was the only building in town 

 not made of pine. The rest of Hinckley is flat and bare, nothing but ashes. 



Making Coffins. 



To-day there was one sign of activity on this flame-scourged place. At a 

 pile of lumber just west of the tracks the carpenters were hammering busily. 

 They were making coffins, knocking them hastily together as a man would 

 soap boxes. As fast as the carpenters could finish them they were claimed. 

 Bodies and scraps of bodies came in on handcars and on wrecking trains. 

 They were borne in by men who had picked them up here and there in the 

 ashes. 



Aid for the Survivors. 

 At least five trains came into what was Hinckley during the day bearing 

 provisions and blan<ets and tents. There were few for these supplies to bene- 

 fit though, for the population was scattered or dead. A detachment of the 

 Minnesota troops set up a trim row of tents along the railway track, and these, 

 the only habitations in Hinckley, were given over to the grave-diggers and the 

 body-finders. Men of the regular army, also, were on hand to give aid. 

 Captain Hale, of the Third Infantry, and 20 of his men, from Fort Snelling, 

 had come early in the day by special orders with tents for the sufferers. But 

 Captain Hale found that the State troops had provided an abundant supply of 

 tents, so he busied his men setting up those already on hand, and on the early 



