The Great Peshtigo Fire-The Worst in United States History

The Great Peshtigo Fire of October 8th, 1871 was the worst fire in the history of the United States. The Peshtigo Fire claimed at least 1,500 lives, and some estimates have the number as high as 2,500. Over one million acres were consumed by flames in this conflagration, as the Peshtigo Fire, whipped by hurricane force winds, turned the forest into a blast furnace. Yet the Peshtigo Fire, although it claimed more lives than the two next worse fires in this country's annals combined, is largely forgotten, because of a cow.

Although this fire burned huge areas of Wisconsin and Michigan, it took the most lives in the town of Peshtigo in Wisconsin, hence the name. There had been only a pair of rainfalls that could even be measured from July through September of 1871 in this heavily wooded region, which is just west of Green Bay, a large bay that is an arm of Lake Michigan in the upper northeast corner of Wisconsin. Peshtigo and the surrounding towns were centers for the manufacturing of wood products, smack in the middle of logging country. The lack of rain around Peshtigo had dried up streams and creeks and had rivers at unusually low levels. All the surrounding terrain was as dry as could be, and wildfires had been popping up around Peshtigo left and right as conditions could not have been more perfect for them to start.

There had been so many small fires that it was hard to breathe sometimes around Peshtigo, and the smoke lay so heavily over Green Bay that those navigating the waters needed a compass in the daytime to tell where they were. On the evening of the 8th, an incredibly strong cold front swept in from the west, with the force of a gale and fanned the flames of these smaller fires into an inferno that began to engulf everything in its path. The firefighters were able to take one look at this wall of flame bearing down on them and know there was nothing that man could do to stop it. People fled before the blaze, which were fueled by the endless piles of sawdust and cuttings from felled trees from the wood industry. An hour and a half after the Peshtigo Fire began there was no longer a Peshtigo, Wisconsin. Only one building, built of wood too green to burn, withstood the fire.

The telegraph poles and lines between towns burned to the ground, cutting people off form one another and leaving them unable to spread the news of the Peshtigo Fire's rampage. People were caught off guard and burned alive, while others suffocated in places where they had sought refuge or drowned in rivers trying to escape the flames that were described as "a tornado of fire". The Peshtigo Fire was so hot and so extreme that it actually was able to jump rivers and made it over Green Bay to burn on the east side of that body of water. The fire creating a deafening roar like the thundering of cannons, and huge pinwheels of fire leapt from one stand of trees to the next. The Peshtigo Fire was literally a firestorm, with the ability to feed itself by convection. The winds in front of it blew the roofs off of houses and barns and as the Peshtigo Fire grew it became almost like a nuclear reaction.

The citizens of the dozen towns obliterated by the Peshtigo Fire had only one chance, and that was to get into some sort of water and hope the fire skipped over them. Some went into shallow swamps and wells and were actually boiled alive, while others went into the cellars of homes and were asphyxiated as the fire sucked all the air out. Many survivors had to spend the entire evening in Green Bay's frigid waters to live, poking their heads up for a few seconds to breathe before the heat forced them back down under water. Many of the bodies of people were burnt into a pile of ashes, and the town records that kept track of the census were so thoroughly destroyed that the true number of dead will never be known.

The Peshtigo Fire burned itself out when the winds died down and was over by the next morning. Twenty six years later there was still no appreciable forest where the fire had raged. The Peshtigo Fire had scorched an area twice the size of Rhode Island, yet it is hardly remembered for one reason. On the same day, another fire sprang up, supposedly because Mrs. O'Leary's cow had kicked over a lantern in her barn. The Great Chicago Fire burnt for three days but only killed about 250 people, however it trumped the Peshtigo Fire in the press of the day so badly that citizens of Wisconsin had to be begged to turn their relief efforts to Peshtigo and the surrounding area rather than Chicago. The fact that these two fires, and some smaller fires in parts of Michigan all occurred on the same day around the same time led to a theory that a comet had broken up and rained meteorites down on the Midwest, igniting these disastrous flames. Whatever the real reason, there now stands in the town of Peshtigo a small museum dedicated to the Great Peshtigo Fire, and a mass grave that contains the remains of almost four hundred victims who perished that day.