To many people, one of the most famous great fires in American history was the Great Chicago Fire. It started on the evening of 8th October, 1871 as nine separated fires and burned until 10th October 1871, when the weather turned to rain. It destroyed roughly 3.3 square miles (8.5km²) of the city, leaving approximately 300 people dead and more than 100,000 residents homeless.
However, also on the evening of 8th October, 1871, some 250 miles north of Chicago, another great fire took place, this one in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, just north of Green Bay. The Peshtigo Fire was much worse, wiping out the booming mill town of Peshtigo, with estimated deaths of around 1,500 people, and possibly as many as 2,500 (some sources simply quote that over 800 people perished). As things stand, the Peshtigo fire has the record for causing the most deaths caused by a single fire in U.S. history; it may well be the case that despite being more deadly, it is less well known, for reasons of it occurring exactly the same night as the Great Chicago Fire.
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In Peshtigo, today, it is possible to visit a museum dedicated to the natural disaster that occurred here in 1871. The Peshtigo Fire Museum preserves the heritage of the Peshtigo Fire and contains Peshtigo documents, records and artefacts from the era. It is possible to see storytelling exhibits and displays of the lifestyle at the time of the disaster. Items include a church tabernacle that the local Roman Catholic priest saved by submerging in the Peshtigo River, a small burned Bible and letters with first-person accounts of the fire and cleanup. The museum stands on the site where St. Mary's Catholic Church stood before the fire and is housed in a former church (the first one to be built after the fire) and converted into its current use in 1963.
With respect to the cause of the Peshtigo fire, a common way to clear forest land for farming and railroad construction was at the time by the setting of small controlled fires. The area had been undergoing an unparalleled drought and on the day of the Peshtigo fire, a cold front moved in from the west, bringing strong winds that fanned the fires out of control. A firestorm ensued, comprising superheated flames advancing on winds of over 100 miles per hour. Survivors reported that it generated a fire whirl (described as a tornado) that threw rail cars and houses into the air. The fire took only two hours for a swath of forest 10 miles wide and 40 miles long to burn and the town of Peshtigo (and nearby Brussels) to be obliterated. The fire jumped across the Peshtigo River and burned on both sides of the inlet town. Many people escaped the fire by immersing themselves in the Peshtigo River or other nearby bodies of water. However, some either drowned or died of hypothermia. On the same evening, another fire started, burning burned parts of the Door Peninsula. Because it was at the same time, some incorrectly assumed that the fire had jumped across the waters of Green Bay. On the Door Peninsula, nuns, farmers and families took refuge in a local chapel and took part in prayers and devotions to the Virgin Mary. Despite being surrounded by fire, the chapel survived and those gathered considered the event to be a miracle. On the same day as the Peshtigo, Chicago and Door Peninsula fires, a number of other blazes occurred. this led to various theories by people at the time and later, historians, that they had a mutual cause, including the impact of fragments from Biela's Comet (which was observed to split in two and has not been seen since 1852), a theory dismissed by scientists; it is thought that the severity of these fires was attributed to the winds from the weather front that moved in that evening. By the time the Peshtigo Fire was over, 1,875 square miles (4,860 km²) of forest and 12 communities had been destroyed. It is not known for certain how many people perished as local records were destroyed in the fire.
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Next to the Peshtigo Fire Museum is the Peshtigo Fire Cemetery. It is in memory of those who died and includes a mass grave where the charred remains of more than 350 people were buried; so many people had died in the firestorm that no one remained alive who could identify all the bodies. The cemetery contains several named graves, alongside signs relating to the lives of those interred here. A memorial can also be found here and this was the first official state historical marker authorized by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. The Peshtigo Fire Cemetery is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. For further information, the Peshtigo Fire Museum website may be found on the link Here and there is an excellent account of the disaster on the section entitled “FIRE!”. More photographs of the Peshtigo Fire Museum and Peshtigo Fire Cemetery are shown in the thumbnail gallery below (click on an image to enlarge):
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