
The Night Sin City Died
It’s been called the greatest single tragedy in the history of that great midwestern state.
October 8, 1871. The night the “wicked” city to the north… burned down. Over fifteen hundred people lost their lives as fiery tongues lapped at the waters of Lake Michigan.
A portrait of the northern Midwest in 1871 might have been described as a desert with gently shifting seasons. From the late winter, all through that long, torrid summer… virtually bone-dry.
A light shower on September 5 kissed the parched earth like an eye dropper squeezed into a frying pan. And then.. nothing. The entire state cringed helplessly under nature’s blowtorch.
And the city to the north… was waiting. How odd! Lake Michigan, a fresh-water ocean, sleeping at her elbow to the east. And the long, languid river snaking its way through the heart of town.
Water everywhere… except where it counted. Water all around, mocking destiny. And the unsuspecting city to the north… was waiting.
October 7. Saturday. Hotel transients talked about the weather. Railroad men, about their shipments. Theatregoers, about the play that night.
A forgotten line from a newspaper editorial said, “Unless we have rain, only God knows how soon a conflagration may sweep this town.”
But Saturday passed, and on Sunday “all hell” broke loose.
The mighty roar of the flames in the dead of night was most terrible to hear, said those who lived to recall. A heat so intense the very earth seemed to melt like butter. Beneath the towering crimson, pale yellow and white, men ran like ants for the river.
The bridges were ablaze, some lifted their heads from watery cover to inhale pure fire. With the sky a ghostly, ghastly midnight sun, the night waned slowly.
When the devilish rhapsody of flames and screams subsided, the city was almost dead.
Some say she paid for her sins… like Sodom, more than two thousand years before. True, the Saturday night joints, jam-packed with the drunken, the senseless, the incoherent, the unsuspecting… could have appeared like live bait in some moralist’s metaphor. But you know the truth. Or at least, most of it.
What you may not know was the name of the city whose demise you’ve just relived: Peshtigo, Wisconsin.
You’d probably not heard of the Great Peshtigo Fire because of a simultaneous tragedy. Though fifteen hundred lost their lives that very same night… three hundred more perished.
The other fire, in a city to the south, you know a great deal about. The Great Chicago Fire.
And now you know THE REST OF THE STORY.