The Big Blowup. The Northwest’s Great Fire

by Elias Colbert (Author), Everett Chamberlin (Author)

This book is about the devastating Great Chicago Fire that ravaged the city. From the intro: "The terrible conflagration in Chicago will long be remembered as one of the most prominent events of the nineteenth century. In the evening of Sunday, October 8, 1871, a stable took fire, and within twenty-four hours thereafter the flames had swept over an area of more than twenty-one hundred acres, destroying nearly three hundred human lives, reducing seventeen thousand five hundred buildings to ashes, rendering one hundred thousand persons homeless, and sweeping out of existence two hundred million dollars' worth of property. Without a peer in her almost magical growth to what seemed to be an enduring prosperity, the city of Chicago experienced a catastrophe almost equally without a parallel in history, and the sad event awakened into active sympathy the whole civilized world. Such intense anxiety to catch every item of intelligence about the great conflagration, such a spontaneous outburst of liberality in aiding the sufferers, has never before been exhibited, except in times of national disaster. And, indeed, the calamity was universally recognized as affecting every one, not only in the United States, but in other countries. As the greatest primary market for produce on the face of the globe, Chicago had long been regarded as the cornucopia of modern civilization, while the energy and enterprise of her citizens had made her an object of envy to many other cities, and the wonder of the world. Her fame had spread far and near, and not even Solomon, in all his glory, ever excited so much admiration among those who went to see and found that the half had not been told them. The present volume is intended to supply the wide-spread popular desire to obtain full and accurate information, in permanent form, about Chicago in her prosperity and affliction. It contains a concise resume of her previous history; a statement of her condition just before the fire; a graphic account of the great conflagration; a carefully revised summary of losses of life and property; a description of the aspect of the city after the sad event; a history of the exertions made to aid the sufferers; with a review of the subsequent efforts made to rebuild the city ‘mid the ashes of its former greatness."