The summer of 1871 had been a dry season. Loggers in the sawmill town of Peshtigo, were careful about fires, mindful of the vast forest surrounding them.
One of the largest factories of wood products in the country was in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. Most of the town’s buildings were made of wood.
New settlers to the area cleared farmland by the “slash and burn” method, increasing chances of a forest fire.
The Chicago and Northwestern Railway was being extended. Workers cut down trees and burned them to clear the land. Sometimes the brush was left by the tracks. Steam engine sparks sometimes ignited the dried stacks of wood.
Small fires had broken out recently, causing folks in Peshtigo to stockpile a large water supply.
No one knows what sparked the fire in the dense forest on October 7th. The flames spread to the nearby village of Sugar Bush where it killed everyone.
High winds whipped the blaze, now 200-feet high, toward Peshtigo, which it reached on October 8th. The citizens had no warning.
Folks jumped in the nearby river where several drowned. Two hundred people died in a tavern. A mass grave held close to 350 bodies so badly burned that they couldn’t be identified.
The mile-high flames were five miles wide. Fire spread through the forest at 90 to 100 mph, hot enough to turn sand into glass.
Called the most devastating fire in our history, it destroyed 1,500,000 acres of timber. When the flames were finally extinguished, an estimated 2,200 people lay dead. The blaze destroyed 12 pioneer towns.
Newspapers barely covered this story because the Great Chicago Fire happened around the same time.
-Sandra Merville Hart
Sources
Biondich, Sarah. “The Great Peshtigo Fire,” Shepherd Express, 2018/01/08 https://shepherdexpress.com/aroun-milwaukee/great-peshtigo-fire.
“Great Peshtigo Fire,” United States History, 2018/01/08 http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2113.html.
History.com Staff. “Massive Fire Burns in Wisconsin,” History.com, 2018/01/08 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/massive-fire-burns-in-wisconsin.
Sandra Merville Hart 
I’m glad you brought this to attention! I lived in Athelstane, Wisconsin, Marinette County which is about 45 minutes from Peshtigo. We went there often. There is a small museum there. It was many years ago but I remember it well. We saw artifacts that were melted together. The communication was not very fast back at the time of the fire. We were told that help was sent to Chicago before the news was known about Peshtigo. So the needed resources were elsewhere. I heard that there were great fireballs that jumped among the treetops. Thanks for the post.
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Thanks for this additional information, Paula. Most people have heard of the Great Chicago Fire but few know about this far more devastating fire. Thanks for your comments. 🙂
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