The Ely miner., 1911-09-08
FIRE CELEBRATION
SEVENTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF
HOLOCAUST OF SEPTEMBER
I, 1894, WAS OBSERVED.
GOVERNOR SPEAKS AT HlNCKLEY
Band Concerts and Banquet to Visit
ing Officials to Mark tho
Days Memorial
Exercises.

With addresses by Governor Eber-
hart and others. band concerts and a
banquet to visiting officials, residents
of the new Hinckley, celebrated the
seventeenth anniversary of the holo-
caust of flame that swept over Pine
county in 1894, destroying in one day
September 1-Hinckley, Sandstone
and six other prosperous towns, caus-
ing the death of 41S residents and
making 1000 others homeless.
| Famous in the annals of Minnesota
for the devastation that it caused is
the Hinckley fire, when the residents
of the village, penned like rats in
trap, were smothered and burned to
death in the worst forest fire in the
history of the United States. Last
year, when Chisholm and Baudette,
with other Northern Minnesota vii
lagos, were visited by fires, the minds
of Minnesotans travelled back in mem
ory to the day sixteen years before
when what had been happy, pros
porous village was transformed into
| "veritable hell on earth," in the words
of a survivor, so quickly that but few
escaped. tie
Warning of Approaching Danger Un-
needed. if
Not unheralded had been the catas-
trophe, for the woods had been burn
ing for weeks and heavy pail of
smoke, reaching even to st. Paul, had
hung in the sky, ct times almost shut
ting out the light of the sun. Other
| towns in the neighborhood had been
| threatened, but backfiring had saved
them, and now and then homesteader
would come fleeing to one of the little
villages of the distict, his family and
what worldly possessions he could
scramble together loaded on wagon,
dragged by jaded team. But there
had been no loss of life.
| So the residents of old Hinckley,
somewhat Injured to the ever-present
danger, ignored it.. Chroniclers since
have laid the entire blame for the
great loss of life upon the persons
themselves, for failure to heed the
warnings and to leave the district.
For the summer had been unusually
dry, no rain falling for three months,
and the woods and underbrush were
like tinder. Fortunately there had
been but little wind, and the fire
smoldered in brush heaps, windfalls
and old logs-only some dead, stand
ing monarch of the forest, ablaze at
night, serving as beacon, locating
the progress of the flames.
Sun Like Red Ball of Fire.
Hot and ominously still was the
morning of September 1, 1894. The
sun hung like great red ball of fire in
the sky; the air was fearfully op-
presssive-there was every indication
of cyclonic conditions. Yet to these
warnings the residents of old Hinck-
ley paid no heed-they were sturdy,
hard fellows, those men of the north
ern pines, and they felt they could
cope with an ordinary blaze.
And so they attended to their busi-
nesses as they had always done that
morning. The first intimation the resi-
dents of Hinckley had that anything
unusual might occur was about noon
when the smoke semed to grow more
dense, and was accompanied by con-
siderable heat. Again they. paid no
heed, and chroniclers tell of little
groups gathering here and there
throughout the village, watching the
southern sky and joking about their
ability as firefghters.
But suddenly, about 2:30 in the after
noon, the storm cloud rose, like an al
most perpendicular wall of black
smoke, surging and roaring and rolling,
sweeping everything in its way to de-
struction. In Pine City, fifteen miles
away, where it appeared to be only a
short distance off, its roar was heard
in Hinckley its progress was terrific.
All morning the wind had blown
| gale from the south, and, gaining
| strength at 1:30, it reached a velocity
Of sixty miles an hour within short
| time.
Heat of First Wave Fatal to Hun
| dreds.
BY the intense Leat of the first wave
most Of the 413 persons were killed.
In Hinckley itself many of the bodies
were burned, but in the surrounding
country many were found without
blister on them, and it is presumed
that the lives of the victims were
snuffed out by poisonous gases gener-
ated by the flames.
A freight train on the Eastern Min
nesota road reached Hinckley at 2:40,
and waited for a south-bound passen-
ger, which arrived at 1925, when a
combination train was made up and