Peshtigo Fire Cemetery, Peshtigo Wisconsin
The Peshtigo Fire Cemetery commemorates a major event in the history of Wisconsin, a tornado of fire which, in a matter of minutes, took the lives of some 800 people and completely destroyed Peshtigo, a town of about 1700 population, and a large surrounding area, even extending across the Menominee River in a northeasterly direction into Upper Michigan. In terms of loss of human life, it was not only the greatest forest fire disaster in American history but also a greater disaster than the great Chicago fire which occurred on the same evening, October 8th, 1871.
The four largest forest fires which occurred in the nineteenth century North America had the same basic causes: many small fires, coupled with unusually dry weather. If the Wisconsin and Michigan fires of October 8th, 1871 are considered as a unit, they were probably the most extensive of the four, there is no doubt that they were the most deadly.
An old, well-maintained cemetery consisting largely of an elongated mound, well covered with grass, having a few shade trees, and landscaped with a few ornamental evergreen shrubs and trees at a commemorative area near the center of the mound, where an Official Wisconsin Marker stands. Near the center of the northwestern edge of the cemetery is a mass burial plot where 350 unidentified victims of the holocaust of October 8th, 1871 are interred. The center of this mass burial is enclosed by an iron picket fence within which is a single headstone commemorating the burial.
Markers and/or monuments in the cemetery date from the middle, 1800s to the early 1920s. Some alterations have occurred in that various known dead were exhumed and re-interred in a newer cemetery, and a number of older markers were destroyed and/or damaged due both to toppling as old graves settled and to vandalism. Old markers have been repaired, reset and reinforced wherever possible. Some re-landscaping has been done, especially in the central area where the official marker is placed and a flagstaff erected.
The original condition of the cemetery is known only to the extent that it was an ordinary small town cemetery of the middle and latter 1800s. It withstood the full blast of the wind-driven fire which swept into Peshtigo via Oconto Avenue, the street on which the cemetery is located. At least some of the original markers withstood the fire and remained standing or were reset in their original locations.
Peshtigo Fire
Fiery hell descended on Peshtigo the night of October 8th, 1871, mutilating northern Wisconsin with a livid scar of death and destruction still unequaled in the tragic annals of the world's great fires.
Within a few short hours, the lives of 800 persons were snuffed out in an inferno of flame and terror. A flourishing saw mill town was leveled to a desert of smoking ashes, its streets strewn with the blackened bodies of men, women and children. Miles of rich farm and wood lands were scorched and littered with corpses of burned victims.
Like other communities on the northern frontier of railroad expansion, Peshtigo was a boom town in 1871. Timber was king here, and the mighty spring rush of logs down the surging Peshtigo river brought the substance of life to its industries.
Work was plentiful that year, at the machines and at the world's largest woodenware factory turning out pails and tubs, broom handles and clothespins, barrel covers and shingles. Up river a ways, men hooked logs from the river booms and sheared them into gleaming planks at the saw mill. Nearby was a sash, door and blind factory, and the village boasted a foundry and blacksmith shop. There were jobs with the railroad construction crews working near town, where the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad was then extending its tracks. Hundreds of transient workmen, many of them new immigrants to this country, swelled Peshtigo's population far beyond the official census of 1,750. The stores, hotels and saloons along the main street on both sides of the river bustled with brisk activity. Farmers from the Sugar Bush, the rural area settled by some three hundred families, extending seven miles south and west of the village, came regularly to town.
Lumberjacks in Peshtigo, between the winter logging camp seasons, along with the settled family folks were proud of Peshtigo. Its two slender spired churches and new frame school building were as fine as any in northern Wisconsin.
It was a good year, blighted only by the hot, unseasonably dry spring and summer. Just two rains fell from July through September, creeks dwindled to muddy trickles, the river level dropped, and even the normally impassable swamps dried to solid prairies of peat. Many of the village wells gave out and water became scarcer as summer turned to fall. The woods and grasslands were already tinder dry and grew more dangerous with each cloudless day.
Spasmodic fires began breaking out near the village in mid-September, flames licked at its outskirts many times but fighting crews of volunteers beat back the threatening tongues of fire. From the Menominee river, seven miles north of Peshtigo, to far south of Green Bay conditions were the same. For almost three weeks, smoke from the smoldering peat fires dimmed the sky, the acrid smell pervading the atmosphere. The ruddy glow of the blazing grass and woods on the night horizon sharply silhouetted the black shapes of the houses and factories.
A bloody sun shone dimly through the pall of dense smoke over Peshtigo on Sunday, October 8th. But the villagers were not unduly alarmed. They lived this last day before their doom much like any other Sabbath in their lives, unaware that they acted on a stage set for disaster.
With the coming of evening, the chill autumn air was suddenly whipped by a stiff, warm wind from the southwest. Flurries of fine white ashes eddied like snow flakes in the gale, and the dull red glare of the outlying fires flickered faintly through the thick curtain of smoke. As quickly as it started, the gale diminished and a dead, ominous calm settled on the village.
Church goers commented on the silent calm and increasingly warm air as they hurried home from evening services, glancing apprehensively at the ruddy southwestern sky. Men in the saloons paused in their drinking to remark on the growing heat, the unnatural stillness.
Just after eight-thirty, a dull roar like the rumbling of a distant volcano, came out of the southwest. As it grew louder, the bloody glow in the sky flared brighter and the bell of the Catholic Church frantically tolled the fire alarm. The wind had started blowing again, strong and hot. Men pulled on their jackets and boots, and rushed to the outskirts for another night of fighting off the encroaching fires.
By ten o'clock, the roar had thundered to an earth shaking crescendo and the ferocious winds, now of tornado velocity, ripped through the village in blinding sheets of sand and smoke. The frenzied blaze whipped closer with savage speed, great gusts of wind carried balls of flaming fury hundreds of feet through the air. They burst on the ground and hungry tongues of devouring flame streaked in every direction. In panic for their lives and families, the fire fighters flung down their buckets and fled towards their homes, Peshtigo could not be saved.
The tornado ripped a flaming roof from a house on the edge of town and shredded it in a blistering rain of fire, the air was a blizzard of burning coals igniting all they touched. High over the rooftops floated giant black clouds of smoke that exploded into belching flames, and the winds lashed both sides of the river into a raging inferno. In less than twenty minutes all that could be seen for miles were swirling smoke and writhing coils of flame. All that could be heard above the thundering roar of the tornado were the screams of the victims.
Fear for their lives had gripped those in their homes only a few minutes earlier, when the first showers of sparks began twisting through the streets. Mothers snatched sleeping children from their beds and rushed into the streets seeking safety, men struggled against the winds to reach their families and lead them out of the fire. Fleeing fugitives were hurtled to the ground by the force of the storm, some dropped dead clutching their throats as if strangled by mad unseen fingers, flaming posts smashed into groups of screaming women and children as they ran aimlessly amid the holocaust seeking help.
A middle aged man, holding his two children, dragged his sick wife on the ground behind him for half a mile, only to drop her a few feet from the safety of the river when her body burst into sickening fire. A young woman, her long blonde hair trailing in flames, shrieked her agony as she stumbled through the stampeding mob. Clutching her infant son to her breast, a bereft mother huddled against the earth, refusing the pleas of her husband to leave their already dead child. A young bridegroom pushed his wife of three days on a wagon bound for the river and as she watched, he crumbled in a lifeless heap and was swallowed by the fire.
About 65 fugitives on the east side jammed the Peshtigo Company boarding house, a cordon of men fought futilely to save the building but the rain of burning coals turned it into a blazing tomb. There was no sanctuary from the flames, the suffocating smoke, the choking banks of poison gases. A breath of air could be found only with the face pushed against the ground.
The river, get to the river, instinct drove the villagers and even the terrorized animals to the banks of the stream in the center of town. The bridge flamed into a water bound funeral pyre, trapping scores who thought safety lay on the other side. Men, women and children leaped into the water and clung to floating logs or stood neck deep in the river. They huddled under wet blankets and splashed themselves with water to keep the flying sparks and flaming fragments from igniting their clothes and hair.
Scores of those who could not reach the river killed themselves. One father slashed the throats of his three children and wife then turned the knife on himself. After watching the spire of the Congregationalist church crack off and stick in the ground like a giant candle, one man rushed to a nearby well and hung himself on the bucket chain. Many ran blindly through the blaze shouting that the end of the world had come, and were silenced only when the fires claimed their lives.
In the Sugar Bush the suffering was the same, the all consuming fires that lept over open fields, the giant balls of black smoke that wafted through the air and exploded into flames, the banks of choking gases, the heat so intense it split huge boulders. Those in the Bush who lived through the night found safety in creek beds, in low ravines and freshly plowed fields where they dug holes for their faces with their hands. The toll was tremendous, even proportionately greater than in the village itself, and only eight farm houses escaped destruction.
A few hours before dawn, the fires spent themselves, the wind died down and the autumn chill returned to the air. The survivors pulled themselves from the river and began wandering through the hot ashes of the leveled village seeking their relatives, or their bodies. The only structures jutting from the smoldering desert were the unfinished framework of a house on the east side of the river, and the brick walls of a dry kiln. Streets could be traced only by the charred and twisted bodies, the shapeless remains of iron wagon wheels. The sickened and grief stricken survivors gathered around piles of burning coals to warm themselves and dry their clothes. The only foods to be found were raw turnips, potatoes and cabbages.
The increasingly colder autumn air chilled all the survivors, many of whom had fled their homes garbed only in scanty night-clothes that were torn and partially burned in their flight.
Big John Mulligan, himself burned during the night of horror, walked six miles north to Marinette and solicited help for the village. By mid-morning on Monday wagon loads of supplies arrived in Peshtigo. The injured were given treatment and carried to Marinette, where one of the hotels was turned into an extra hospital. Crews worked day and night gathering the remains of the dead and carrying their sad burdens to the cemetery. Those who could not be identified were buried in a mass grave, still visible in the historic burial ground. A memorial marker has been erected there. Tents were brought to Peshtigo to shelter the homeless.
When word of the disaster reached Green Bay via a steamer Monday night, relief supplies began pouring into the village. Over $155,000 was raised within the next few months throughout the country and in some foreign lands for the relief of the Peshtigo survivors. Putting aside their sadness, the villagers began rebuilding their homes and industries.