Great Hinckley Fire
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| Great Hinckley Fire | |
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| Location | Hinckley, Minnesota |
| Date | September 1, 1894 3:00 p.m. (CDT) |
| Burned area | 200,000 acres (810 km²) |
| Ignition source | Drought |
| Land use | Logging |
| Fatalities | 418 - 800 |
The Great Hinckley Fire was a major conflagration that burned an area of 420 square miles or 200,000 acres (810 km²). The fire killed many people, with the minimum number centering at 418. This is in dispute, however, as many scholars believe the number to be closer to 800. The fire occurred on September 1, 1894 and was centered at Hinckley, Minnesota. After a two-month drought, several fires started in the pine forests of Pine County, Minnesota. The main contributor to the fire was apparently the then-common method of lumber harvesting, which involved stripping trees of their branches, littering the ground with such detritus. Another contributing factor was a temperature inversion that trapped the gases from the fires. The fires developed into a firestorm, with temperatures reaching 1000 degrees Fahrenheit (500 °C). Some people were able to escape by climbing into wells, or by reaching a nearby pond or the Grindstone River. Others escaped by jumping onto two crowded trains that were able to get out of town. James Root, an engineer on a train heading south from Duluth, was able to rescue nearly 300 people by backing a train up nearly five miles to Skunk Lake, where people could escape the fire.
According to the Hinckley Fire Museum, "Because of the dryness of the summer, fires were common in the woods, along railroad tracks and in logging camps where loggers would set fire to their slash to clean up the area before moving on. Some loggers, of course left their debris behind giving any fire more fuel on which to grow. Saturday, September 1st, 1894 began as another oppressively hot day with fires surrounding the towns and two major fires that were burning about five miles to the south. To add to the problem, the temperature inversion that day added to the heat, smoke and gases being held down by the huge layer of cool air above. The two fires managed to join together to make one large fire with flames that licked through the inversion finding the cool air above. That air came rushing down into the fires to create a vortex or tornado of flames which then began to move quickly and grew larger and larger turning into a fierce firestorm. The fire first destroyed the towns of Mission Creek and Brook Park before coming into the town of Hinckley. When it was over the Firestorm had completely destroyed six towns, and over 400 square miles lay black and smoldering. The firestorm was so devastating that it lasted only four hours but destroyed everything in its path."
The towns of Mission Creek, Brook Park and Hinckley were completely destroyed. Sandstone was also burned. Boston Corbett, the Union soldier who killed John Wilkes Booth, is generally considered to have died in the fire, because his last known whereabouts were in the vicinity, and a "Thomas Corbett" is listed as one of the victims. It appears that this was the second-deadliest fire in the history of Minnesota, surpassed only by the 1918 Cloquet Fire.
Today, a 37-mile section of the Willard Munger State Trail, from Hinckley to Barnum, is a memorial to the fire and the devastation it caused. There are several memorials. In the town of Hinckley on Highway 61, the Hinckley Fire Museum is located in the former Northern Pacific Railway depot. It sits just a few feet north of where the original depot burned in the fire. It is open from May 1 until the end of October.
[edit] References
- Gilman, Rhoda R. The Story of Minnesota's Past, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1991. ISBN 0-87351-267-7
- Brown, Daniel James, Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894, The Lyons Press, 2006. ISBN 1-59228-863-4
- Minnesota Historical Society Library, History Topics, Hinckley Fire of 1894
- The Story of James Root
