70 Report of the Forest Commission. 



Minnesota — Towns totally destroyed : Hinckley, Pokegama, Sandstone, 

 Sandstone Junction or Miller, Partridge, Cromwell, Curtis, Cushing, Mission 

 Creek. Partly destroyed: Finlayson, Mansfield, Rutledge, Milaca. County 

 totally destroyed, Pine. Counties partly destroyed: Kanabec, Carlton, Ben- 

 ton, Aitken, Milie Lacs, Morrison. 



Wisconsin — Towns totally destroyed: Comstock, Benoit, Barronett, Poplar, 

 Marengo, Granite Lake. Partly burned : Spencer, High Bridge, Ashland 

 Junction, Fifield, Washburne, Cartwright, Grantsburg, Turtle Lake, Rice 

 Lake, Muscoda, Bashaw, Shell Lake, South Range. Counties partly burned : 

 Barron, Washburn, Florence, Ashland, Taylor, Chippewa, Burnett, Marinette, 

 Price, Grant, Douglas, Marathon, Bayfield. 



Michigan — Towns partly burned: Trout Creek, Ewen, Sidnaw. Counties 

 partly burned : Houghton, Ontonagon (almost total except in towns), Huron, 

 Macomb. 



{Portland Oregonian, August 8, 1894.) 



Even as the awful power of that natural phenomenon which men call fire 

 was most lamentably shown at Phillips, Wis., the other day, so also have been 

 gloriously exhibited during the period that has since elapsed, those optimistic 

 and sympathetic elements of human nature without which man could never 

 have been able to make this earth a fit habitation for anything but howling 

 wild beasts. Already the blackened remains that were left by the forest fires 

 have been partially cleared away, and the timbers of fresh houses and stores 

 and mills are beginning to show themselves, bright and new, against the 

 charred soil, and, thanks to the practical and charitable form which the sym- 

 pathy of their fellow men and women in various parts of the country has 

 taken, none of those left homeless and destitute has suffered longer than was 

 actually necessary to convey supplies from the places of giving to the place of 

 need. These are things that should and do fill the minds of all good Amer- 

 icans with pride and satisfaction. Disaster will come, in America as else- 

 where, but it can not cast down Americans for long, nor will Americans who 

 have themselves escaped calamity ever turn a deaf ear to the cry from those 

 who have suffered. 



There are destructive fires somewhere in the forests of the United States 

 every year, but in 1848, 1854, 1871, 1884, 1887, 1889 and 1891, the destruction was 

 so great as to render those years especially notable. The fire-* of 1884 were mostly 

 in the valleys of the Ohio and Wabash, and an enormous amount of property 

 was destroyed. Fortunately, no lives were lost, and this was due principally 

 to the fact that the region visited abounds in small watercourses, to the shal- 

 low valleys of which the people retreated, and from which the flames turned 

 back, most of the damage being done on the ridges. Many people saved their 

 lives *hat year by rushing into soft swamps and bogs and burying themselves 

 up to their necks in the moist ooze. The fires of 1871 devastated Wisconsin, 

 as have the fires of this year, and were almost contemporary with the great 

 conflagration which destroyed the metropolis of the Middle West. The fires 

 of 1881 were in Michigan, and those of 1887 swept over Kansas, Nebraska and 

 the Indian Territory. Prairie fires began where the woods left off, and car- 

 ried the sheet of flames across vast stretches of level country to other forests. 

 Thousands upon thousands of valuable range cattle were destroyed that year. 



