Today in History: The Great Chicago fire destroys everything

By October 10th the fires had been burning for 3 days and multiple efforts to put it out had failed using every available means at the time. By the time the last flames were put out around 300 people were dead, over 100,000 people were homeless and $200+ million worth of property was destroyed.

They year was 1871

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It is estimated that nearly 70% of the buildings in Chicago circa 1871 were made of wood so it is understandable that an inferno could quickly get out of control.

I have no idea how they are able to determine this information, but they are aware of the exact location that the fire started and it was on the O'leary farm near the city center. No one knows exactly what started the fire, but the popular fairy tale is that the family cow kicked over a gas lantern in the barn that night.

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_{dammit, cow!}

There were a lot of factors that contributed to the blaze spreading so fast and getting out of control: It had been an extremely dry year, it was a very windy couple of days (which I cant tell you from having lived there a while it is commonly very windy,) and the origin of the fire was near a number of lumber yards and warehouses storing dry goods.

Once the fire became extremely hot pieces of flaming debris actually flew all the way across the river to spread to the other side.

Just when things started to look like they couldn't possibly get any worse, the fire had spread to a rail yard where there was a train that was carrying kerosene of all things. Just a few hours after that, the building that controlled all the water mains in the city caught fire and was destroyed in mere minutes. The city had now lost all of its defenses and the citizens and firefighters could do nothing but stand back and watch it burn.

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_{It began at 1 and ended well, you know}

Late on the 9th it began to rain but at that point the fire had pretty much burned itself out as the densely populated central area was completely destroyed and there were large spaces between properties in the northern section (indicated by "10" on the map above.) All the plans that were put forth by the city to prevent this sort of thing happening had failed.

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By the time it was all over 1/3 of the city's population had lost their property. Chicago looked like it had been bombed and there was literally nothing left. This disaster made a lot of Americans at the time reevaluate urban life and many decided to return to the countryside.

Although it isn't talked about because Chicago is the highest-profile city involved, there were actually many other fires that occurred on those same days around the same lake (Lake Michigan) that Chicago is located on. The one that took place in Peshtigo, Wisconsin where more than 2,000 lives were lost. The combination of a very dry season, high winds, and the fact that it was autumn was a recipe for disaster.

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Today it is possible to visit the exact spot that the fire started back in 1871 and it is ironically located inside the Robert J. Quinn Fire Academy