Posted on 08/13/2018 7:41:24 PM PDT by crz
The fire that nobody seems to know about.
Since it took place in 1871 it’s no surprise that it’s not well known
I thought that may have been related to a meteor shower.
Same night as the Chicago fire - bet it was a meteor that caused them both.
It happened on the same day as the Chicago Fire. It covered several counties in Northern Wisconsin.
I spent some summers in Northern Wisconsin. There was one place I went where you could still burned out stumps. I assume that this was from the fire, and not something that happened later.
Fires extended to the East as well as far as Holland MI.
My wedding took place in the Reformed Church there which was the only building in town not to burn because it had a tin roof.
“Could A Meteorite or Comet Cause All The Fires of 1871?”
Ron Baalke baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov
Mon Aug 23 13:55:27 EDT 2004
http://meteorite-identification.com/mwnews/08232004.htm
Google Ignatius Donnelley and Comet Biela
My Grandmom went through this fire as a little girl. Although she died before I was born (1950) she had told the story of how they survived in the river by sheltering under a patch quilt and dunking under the water. They could only stay above for a few seconds and the quilt would start to smolder and then had to dunk under again.
She claimed that over 3 thousand people died since her Dad, my great Gramps, was a woods boss who ran several crews and that he said that there was several camps that disappeared and the men were never found.
It was so dry that year that they had to haul water to the crews out in the swamps for the horses and crewmen. They were building RR spurs to access timber for the winter.
To this day, there has NEVER been another forest fire that consumed even a tiny amount of acreage since they now LOG and MANAGE those forests up there. The county sells enough timber to put an average of 1.5 to 2 million dollars-sometimes more, into the county coffers each year.
NO it was NOT. It was caused by slash burning by the farmers clearing land and the slash left behind by wasteful logging in the day.
It all got together and away it went. That is why so many got caught in the fire. They were used to smelling the smoke from the slash and stump burning.
It was very dry conditions, and windy. Lots of wood, saw dust laying around from logging. The winds whipped it up into a fire storm. It was so wild it jumped over the Green Bay into Door County. People just didn’t have time to get away. People were burned to ashes.
You should see the Kingston Plains up between Munising Mich and Grand Marias.
I dang near cry when I see that. All they had to do is NOT slash burn it and we could be logging great White Pine forests up there to this day.
I read a book about it.
It was ignored mostly because the Chicago fire happened at the same time, or very close.
Same day as the Great Chicago Fire.
Some were ID’d by a ring or a watch they used to own. Some died out in a field and never had a hair on their head harmed.
Grandmother said it sucked whole houses up into the air. Dogs and Horses and everything.
Port Huron had a big fire the same day too.
Plenty of people have heard of it, especially here on FR.
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/18711008/index
Wow, you mean climate change was causing forest fires back in 1871???? If that’s the case, then it stands to reason that climate change caused Mrs. O’Leary’s cow to kick over that lantern the same night.
I know about it. There is some great information available on line regarding this fire. It was overshadowed by the Chicago Fire.
I've known about it since I was in grade school. But disasters that occur in rural areas such as the Lake Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928, which killed over 2,000 people and is the second deadliest hurricane to hit the US, are not as well remembered as those like the Chicago Fire that occur in big cities.
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