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.
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, owing to the fact that 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
