| and put out the fire at the Morrison house. Henry MacFarlane
was foreman of the planing mill and he came in in great excitement and
defied anybody to shut off the water as he had to have it to save the planing
mill. I told the engineer Albert Arnold to blow the fire whistle, which
he did and in a few minutes one hose cart and some of the firemen came
back from the Oconto Company's fire and put out the Morrison fire, and
then returned to the Oconto Company fire. About that time Frank Waters
came in and started to shut off the water from one line of hose, as he
said that he had to have it in the west end of our lumber yard or the fire
would get away from them, and I thought he and MacFarlane were going to
come to blows, but I told Frank there was a team coming from the shingle
mill with 500 feet of hose which he could have, which satisfied him and
in a few minutes he had that hose strung from Pecor Street across the west
end of our yard and did good work with it. MacFarlane also succeeded in
saving the planing mill, although it was pretty hot there for a while.
By nine o'clock the fire had burned down so that there was no further danger,
and the sawmill started up.
The Ullman Sales Stable on Huron Street got afire but it was put out. And there were many people on top of their buildings putting out sparks, among them Mr. I. Robertson Macartney - the pastor of the Presbyterian Church - who was on top of the manse and he had a line of people handing up buckets of water to him. The Wall Phillips livery stable, on the corner where the post office now is, also caught fire but it was put out. Another big fire was the one which burned the No.1 Fire Engine House on Congress Street, and which spread to the Ford Block and the Presbyterian Church, both
 of which were completely destroyed. This was in December, 1890. At that time we had no waterworks, and as one of the fire engines had burned in the No. 1 Engine House, we had only one fire engine, which was placed at the river at our sawmill but they could not get up power enough to throw a stream as far as the Presbyterian Church, and they could not throw any water on the roof, and while there were men up on the roof with pails they were unable to prevent the fire catching in the belfry, and it spread quickly until the whole building was afire.
The Oconto County Courthouse burns as people came from miles to
watch. The roof and central tower have just colapsed in this shot and the
fire fighters were driven back by the heat and danger. Eventually the roof
and top two floors were gutted. It was soon rebuilt in much the same style.
Photo - Oconto Count WIGenWeb Project archives.
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Other bad fires were the Armory, the Court House, and the Gregor Roth Hotel. In the latter fire I believe a man who was sleeping there was suffocated. This fire was on a cold Sunday morning. Another big fire was May 5, 1924, when the Holt Hardwood Company flooring plant and last block factory burned. This fire was set by lightning and spread so rapidly that the Fire Department were unable to do anything with it, but they did save the sheds. Our own fire losses were very small in comparison to the amount of insurance paid. There was one fire which burned the sorting shed at the east end of the sawmill, October 23, 1903, causing a loss of $1131.45; another one inside the sawmill, near the gang, December 19, 1917, causing a loss of $1548.94; another one in the shavings vault and the boiler room of the sawmill, April 4, 1933, causing a loss of $1437.84; and a fire August 1, 1934, when the part of the sawmill occupied by the hogs which ground up the wood for fuel caused a loss of $5688.24. This latter fire appeared to have been deliberately set at the northeast corner of the mill, but we never found out who set it. The last sawmill fire was September 19. 1941. At this time the
sawmill had been shut down and a large part of the machinery removed. We
then sold to Arnovitz, to be wrecked by him, the building and what machinery
was left and he had removed nearly all of the machinery which he could
use, and had roof and the sides of the mill torn off but the frame work
was still standing. His men were cutting up the old engine, with an acetylene
torch, and they set the fire and it was soon a roaring furnace. The Fire
Department was unable to save the boiler room, which was across the railroad
track from the main property, and that also burned with all of the machinery
in it as it had not been disturbed up to that time. The brick building,
in which the electrical machinery was located, was not burned.
There were several fires in the planing mill. One July 8, 1896, in the shavings vault, causing a loss of $867.80, and a large fire In the planing mill proper September 20, 1903, with a loss of $7140.19, and another fire in the shavings vault with a loss of $291.09. The insurance adjuster complimented us on putting out the fire in the planing mill, saying he had never seen a fire put out after it had got such a good start. We had several fires caused by lightning in the electric power plant but the damage was less than $500.00 altogether. April 12, 1911, we had a fire in the lumber yard which burned lath amounting to $1438.25. This fire was set by some boys about 9:00 P. M., and if it had not been for good work by the Fire Department the whole yard probably would have burned. We had a big fire in the wood yard on the south side of the river
October 1, 1897, which threatened to burn all of the houses on the south
side west of Collins Avenue. A young man set fire at the northeast corner
of the yard, near the shingle mill, when a northeast wind was blowing,
and it was a great fight to save anything, but the fire was finally stopped
when about half of the wood in the yard had burned. The men hauled sixteen
foot long two-inch planks from the lumber yard and made a fence across
the center of the wood yard, and then got behind that with their hose and
finally stopped the fire, but they could not stand up in front of the fire
on account of the heat and smoke. About midnight the Marinette Fire Department
arrived on a special train, having been summoned by the Mayor, but by that
time we had the fire under control so they did not unload their engine.
We had five barn fires between 1906 and 1919, with a total loss of $5137.73.
HOLT'S SPUR FIRE
"What was the worst Forest Fire you ever saw?" I asked Jack Foley, the Oconto River Driver. "That is a hard question to answer," he replied, "as I have seen so many, but the hottest one was when the big landing burned at Holt's Spur on the North Western Line south of Lakewood. It was in 1918 and, as usual with big fires, it was in the month of May. There was a logging camp close to the railroad and it had been in operation about a year. In the spring and summer of the previous year the crew had peeled Hemlock bark and during the winter the bark had been hauled to the track and shipped, and the peeled Hemlock logs had been decked along side of the Spur to be shipped during the summer. "We had started peeling bark again and there were about forty
men in the crew. The day the fire occurred was dry and windy and there
were fires in the woods all over Northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan,
one of those unusual days when fire seems to start on the slightest piovocation.
The air
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