Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1889-06-21

a drop of water could be had to put upon
the tire. and the citizens resigned them
selves 10 see the city blotted out. The fire
leaped across Front street at Madison and
caught in the new Opera House, and in
half an hour laid an entire square across
Front street in ashes. 1t was then APP
parent that the Occidental Hotel must go,
Us we'll as the most substantial buildings
i'll its ne;ghborhood. BY 4:3O o'clock the
fire had swept over the best dry goods
stores, and all the banks, telegraph If
fees and newspaper offices in the city,
and had gone south of 1esler
immense area covered with te1e-
ments, lodging houses. cheap hotels, rail
road and steam warehouses, wharyes, s,w
and planning mills and the whols-
sale district of the town, all built upon
piles and sawdust. Here the progress #
the fire was terribly rapid. By O'Clock
the whole area Of sixteen squares long
by from three to six wide, not counting
the long piers on which many of thu,
largest warehouses and mills were built
was involved in flames, which now lit W.
the heavens for many miles.
From being madly frantic the populace
had become apparently resigned to the
situation, and nearly everybody saw that
he could do nothing to quench the fire,
and coolly turned his attention to saving
as much as possible Of portable property
The three companies of militia belong
ing to the city were called out and put on
guard around the limits of the fire. Two
sworn i'll to help them maintain order,
which they found little difficulty in doing.
The burnt-out residents of the tenement
house district managed to save good
many of their goods, and with them they
camped down in the streets on vacant
lots, or in the door-yards Of more fortl-
nate people and made themselves as
comfortable as possible for the night.
Dispatches which had been sent to Ia
coma, Olympia, and Port Townsend
brought in some fire apparatus. and many
willing hands to help fight the flames, but
when they arrived they found that moth
ing could be done except patrol the
streets and protect the thousands of dol
lars worth Of property that was exposed.
This they did, finding little to do, how
ever, except to keep in order the crowds
Of sight-seers which all night long surged
through the burned region.
All estimates of the loss, Of course, vary
widely. Nobody puts it at less than s 10,
DOC, coo, and some rate it as high as 800
DOC, 900. Among the institutions and
firms burned out were five banks, three
theaters. eight agricultural implement
warehouses, eight iron and machine
shops, four newspapers, four large job
printing offices and binderies, seven
commission firms, five drug stores, two of
them wholesale, nineteen dry goods,
boot and shoe stores. six wholesale deal
ers in cigars and confectionery, twelve
furniture dealers, three dealers in general
merchandise, twenty-one groceries, the
best hotel in the city, and at least ten
other hotels and lodging houses,
one hundred and sixty saloons. four
livery stables, forty meat mar
kets, sixteen clothing and furnishing
houses, three laundries. four paint and
oil dealers, five dealers in musical instru-
Telegraph office, the American District
Telegraph Office, and tie telephone Office,
all the warehouses of the Columbia and
Puget Sound Steamship Company, three
Of the O. r. Il N. Company, the Seattle,
Lake Shore g. Eastern Railway Company,
the Canadian Pacific Dock, and all the
warehouses of the Northern Pacific Com
pany except one, u large, new one that is
hardly yet completed.
The streets Of tie burnt section this
morning were filled with fallen walls,
columns, and charred telegraph poles,
twisted and tangled wires, and bent street
railway rails. There was also vast
amount of furniture, trunks, and hun
dreds of safes rescued from the burning
offices, all Of which stood in the open
street all night long, with nobody offer
ing to modest them. The bank vaults
have been examined, and found to be all
right. None of them have been opened
yet, but there is every indication that
they have carried their contents through
the burning trial in safety. The peo-
pie of Semitic are bearing their great
loss philosophically, and more than one
man who has suffered said to-day that he
was glad the fire had swept out Of exist
ence lot of worthless buildings which
were bringing enormous rents, and which
never would De torn down SO long as they
could be rented. Nowthat they had been
destroyed new brick Or stone buildings
would be built, and Seattle would go to
the front faster than it has ever hoped to
do heretofore. There is also another
cause of satisfacticn-th. Chinese quarter
was utterly blottel out.