Hinckley and Cloquet/Moose Lake fires

[Blackjack77]

Recently My Wife and I renewed our interest in the 1918 Cloquet/Moose lake
fires. Her Father was born Oct 12 1918 in Duluth-- the day of the fire and our
desire to know more prompted Us to buy a book about the Cloquet and 1894
Hinckley fire. Her Father passed away several years ago ,so He no longer is a source
of info, but Her Mother has interesting stories concerning the 1918 fire.
Anyway- after reading both books, each mentioned the fact that many people buried
their most prized possesions in their yards. Some of these people lost their lives or couldn't
recover items because the landscape looked so different. Now the fire was extremely
devastating and even burned down in some areas several feet into the ground,possibly
destroying buried objects. Just something to keep in mind when hunting NE minnesota.
Never know what might be found.
Very sad fact is each fire killed about 500 people each. I highly recommend both books--
"Under a Flaming Sky" and " The Fires of Autumn"- course living in this area and having links
to relatives affected by the fire gave each book deeper meaning.
HH- -tim

 

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[wolfpaw518]

interesting.... my wife and I go up to Duluth every so often, on the way we pass Hinckley and see the sign for the fire Museum. We've never taken the time to stop and check it out... Books sound like good reading.

neil

 

[Wetgreenie]

That could be interesting...Hit up the museum to see the old pictures.
Maybe do a little research.....hmmmm

 

[Wetgreenie]

I did get up there (1st week of march) Dang history center
dosn't open till may 1st.

 

[Scribe]

I've read quite a bit on the Hinkley/Cloquet fires, interesting stuff.
There was an engineer that drove his train into the affected areas in Pine County to rescue people. The train could not go fast enough to escape the flames so the engineer got it as far as he could and stopped near a lake.
The people ran for the water as the fire came down on them. The assistant engineer had to pry the engineers fingers from the controls because the heat had seared his flesh to them. The engineer also had a piece of glass stuck in his neck near the artery from a window that had exploded from the heat.
They made it into the water and the way it sounds the fire was traveling so fast that in a couple of minutes it was past them.

There are a number of stories of people trying to run for the water where they didn't make it. I saw a picture that was taken after the fire of Moose Lake. A bunch of the locals drove their cars into the lake to try to wait out the fire. I can't remember specifically how they did, but I don't think it was too good.

The best description I've read of the fire was that the flames extended miles into the sky and the light from the flames could be seen in Iowa.

 

[Wetgreenie]

holy sheep shit! ....... that is unreal.....
they must have thought the world was comming to an end.

 

[Gypsy Heart]

sad

 

[Scribe]

I think a picture is worth a thousand words on this one. I've read about people hiding in root cellars and in wells hoping the fire would pass them by...sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.
There are two stories that always choked me up when I read about the fire. The first was the train-Suicide Express- the second was about a telegraph operator. If I remember correctly he was in Hinkley and rather then running, he stayed to keep typing updates and requests for help. His last message was "I think I've stayed too long". That always sort of got me.
The fire leveled anything in it's path. When the survivors came back and tried to rebuild I imagine it was chaotic. Everything would have looked like a charred landscape on an alien world!

One of the things I noticed in Cloquet was the streets. There are a bunch of streets that aren't straight. They break up here and there....not to an extreme, but enough where you wonder what the heck.
I was told that was from the fire. People came back and made their best guess where their property was, (and I'm sure more then one person over exaggerated the size of their property). Because of some of the discrepancies where property boundaries and roads were the town kind of got chopped up so not everything fits the way it used to.
A friend of mine that lived in Cloquet had a real strange basement. It was a smaller, older root cellar in the middle of a more modern basement. Someone figured that it was the original cellar for the property and after the fire someone decided to extend the footprint of the house by making the second cellar around the first. It was a strange looking place...

Anyways, I imagine that if you can find some of the old homesteads that weren't reclaimed there are probably some pretty interesting stuff, and if they did bury caches the hiding place would have been real hard to find when they got back after everything was destroyed.