Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1894 — RUINS OF HINCKLEY. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

RUINS OF HINCKLEY.

WHAT A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT SAW THERE. Scene of Unutterable Horror, Desolation and Death Frightful Experiences of the People—How the Proiperoo* Minnesota Town Was Wiped Oat. Eirth and Air Aflame! Duluth (Minn.) correspondence: Despite the hundreds of columns which have been printed descriptive of the great forest tires in Northern Minnesota, the most careful reader cannot but have failed to reach anything like a full realization of the horrors of that terrible holocaust which had the thriving village of Hinckley for its center. No one who has not gone over the burned territory, seen for himself the devastation wrought and talked with the survivors of tho awful tragedy, can begin to appreeiat: what that ever-to-be-remembered afterno ;n and evening were to the people of the stricken territory. “It was as though the lid of hell had been lifte 1 off for awhile, allowing the flames and smoke of the infernal regions to feast on poor help-

less humanity, ” was the way one man in Hinckley briefly described the scene to me. I 9pent ten days in Johnstown, Pa., immediately after the awful flood in the Conemaugh valley; I saw Louisville, Ky., only a day or two it was visited by one of the most destructive and fatal cyclones in our history; I was in Sioux City, lowa, bv the first train which could take me there after the memorable flood in that city; I saw the ruin wrought in Titusville and Oil City by that remarkable conflagration when even the river, covered as it was with oil, became a blazing serpent, miles in length, shooting its fiery tongues 200 feet in air. Hut—always excepting Johnstown—l have never witnessed a scene of such completo devastation, such uttor destruction, as is presented for miles and miles north of St. Paul along the St. Paul & Duluth and Eastern Minnesota Railroads. There is a territory, varying in width from fen to thirty miles and in length from thirty to one hundred miles, in which the flamss loft no live thing. The whole territory is blackened ruin —tens of thousands of acres of charred

stumps, smoking ground, gnawing flames, even yet reluctant todleave while there yet remains fuel on which to feed. Where were once great forests, partially cleared farms, prosperous saw-mill villages, the homes of industrious settlers, now all is ruin. Even at St. Paul I found the air dark with smoke, and as I traveled north the smoke became more dense until, once in the heart of the burned district, it could be seen rising in columns and dense masses in all directions, completely obscuring the sun. Even the lleav.Mi* Ablaze. How came the great fire of September 1 which swept over so many miles cf territory, burning several villages and wipping oat over 500 human lives'? Not through any unsual prevalence of smaller fires or through any lack of vigilance or care on the part of the people, but through a combination of conditions very difficult to explain clearly, and against which no man or number of men could have struggled successfully. Let us glance at the conditions existing before the terrible conflagi’ation swept over the country. The extended drouth, the quietude of the atmosphere, the fires burning among the pine stumps and roots in the forest—these had resulted in filling the air with dense masses of smoke, laden with turpentine and resinous gases, inflammable in themselves. Then came a veritable cyclone—the wind flowing sixty miles an hour—sufficient in itself to have wrought untold damage. The wind instead of disk ating the gas-laden clouds of smoke only served to condense them. Added to this, the air seemed charged with electricity. Beginning several miles south of Hinckley and sweeping northward came the cyclone, bsarin.; with it the dense masses o. gas and smoke, which speedily took fire either from thp • ground fires over which they

passed or from electricity. The result was that the (whole heavens seemed in a blaze. Immense masses of roaring flame were hurled along, many feet above the surface of the ground, igniting everything over which they swept. Great black clouds were seen rushing forward, whirling and roaring in the wind "only to burst into flame 3 with an explosion like the discharge of ordnance. Many of the buildings, as I was told hymen who had witnessed the remark/>le and terrorizing sight, did

not take fire from the outside, but from with in. suddenly burst ng into flames all through the interior and then exploding. Before the win! came up the people of Hinckley were generally about their usual vocations—working in the sawmill, about the streets, in the stores, along the railroads, etc. They were impres-ed with the unusual condition of the atmosphere, but were not frightened. The increased density of the smoke, so great that lamps were lighted in the houses shortly after noon, they attributed to the uncommon stillness of tne air. The tire department had been on constant watch for weeks gua ding against the near approach of the fo.est fires, and at this time were fighting a fire on the western verge of the village, but had it completely under control. The company was a volunteer one, aid there was no water system in the village. But the boys ha l a great quantity of hose and usually were able to get water either from the mill pond on one side of*the village or from the “gravel pit” on the other. In this instance, however, several teams were being employed drawing water for the fire company. To the fact that these teams and wagons were accesib e when the crisis came many people owe their successful flignt fr.im the flames. Suddenly came the wind—“the cyclone of fire, ” as the survivors call it. The insignificant fire which the men

were fighting paled before the immensity of the volume of flame and smoke which came rushing over the heads of the firemen, and they were immediately forced to turn and flee for their lives, some on foot and some in the water wagons. At the same moment began all over the village, with its population of 1,500 souls, the flight for In the Gravel Pit. No one attempted to seek a refuge in the small mill pond to the west of the village. It was difficult of access for the villagers at best, being beyond the railroad embankment, and moreover was filled completely full of logs, so that it would have been almost impossible to get into the water. From the mill pond along tho northern border of the village, at the foot of a considerate bluff, is the Grindstone River, never much of a stream, and its bed now nearly dry. At the eastern verge of the village was a hollow, known as the gravel pit, in which was a douplo of feet of water. This was the only natural place of refuge for the people, and it seemed a poor refuge indeed. About AlO peoplo did reach the gravel pit, however, and by lying down or crouching in the water, and pouring water over each other, succeeded in fighting off death. A few perished there from suffocation and heat, _ a few from fright and exb auction, and one man was fatally inured by being trample lonby a cow. Several horses, cows and pigs, and even a number of rabbits and a few wildcats and lynx, crowded themselves into the pit with the people and came out ali\e. As the flames rolled through the air above themtlie people in the pit suffered untold agonies, and many were so severely burned that they will be under the care of doctors for some time to come. To this gravel pit, however, and to the two trains guided hy the brave engineers, Best and Root, nearly all who escaped owe their lives. A few found refuge in water holes in the Grindstone River and a few succeeded in escaping by running for miles along the railroad tracks, having been unable to reach the trains. Of the 1,500 people of Hinckley nearly 500 perished. At Sandstone, a little village a few miles north on the Eas era Minnesota Railroad, sixty-nine peri' hed. At Fokegama several lest their lives, ana of the settlers scattered here and there through tho forest on small clearings very few escaped. Altogether, in and about Hinckley, fully 600 people persshed. Eccentricity of tlie Flame*. As I walked about the smoking ruins of Hinckley I could not but remark tho complete destruction wrought by the flame-;. Every house was destroyed. The sidewalks, and even the culverts running under the streets were burned. Two landmarks, however, remain to show that fires as well as floods can he eccentric. The little wooden outhouse belonging to the Eastern Minnesota

depot is intact, without a sign of fire on it, though of the depot and hotel across the way not a vestige remains. Again, down beyond the ruins of the St. Paul and Duluth Bailroad roundhouse there stands a garden fence of thin pickets, dry as tmder. on which the fire ha 3 left no mark. Every house and tree and every foot of sidewalk has been converted into ashes, but the picket lence stands as clean and unmarked as though no lire had ever come within a mile of it. To explain such things is impossible. They are facts, nevertheless. Here and there are bits of clothing, remnants of shoes, buttons, etc., and the_ peculiar dark, greasy-looking spots which the initiated recognizes immediately as the places where victims of the fire perished. Near the site of the roundhouse on the street is a quantity of scorched feathers and bu ned remnants of clothing. The careless passerby would not notice the place, but it marks a scene of such heroic self-sac-rifice as is seldom met with. On this spot perished a sick man and his two would-be saviors. He was unable to rise from his bad, and two heroic men carried him from the house lying on his hlankets and pillow, and tried to conrsv him to a place of safety. After th* fire, when the searchers went a boot the streets gathering up the d««4, they found the three corpses. V » corpse of the sick man was easily

identified, but the two nob’e fellows who died in their heroie effort to save hitn were burned beyond recognition. No one will ever know who they were, this side of heaven. Awfal to t'on>mplate. The mind can hardly grasp the extent of the disaster that has withered with the torch of fire and of death a large area of Minnesota, Wisconsin,

and Michigan, leaving only blackened waste where beauty once reposed and human ashes where once was the sweet vigor of life! A blackened region, burned houses, and charred bodies once animated with immortal souls—these are the relics of the fiery tornado that swept whole towns and villages out of existence and leveled the beauties of the forest to a blackened, smoking ruin. But yesterday a scene of prosperity, of human hope and courage and thrift, of human lives and loves, and now There is woe jiled on woe. horror upon horror, a charred and blackened chaos beneath, a heaven of smoke above, a city—a dozen cities—of the dead, with hope extinguished by despair and love turned from its objects on earth to objects beyond the dividing line of lite: And oh. the sublime patho3 of tho change—the heroism displayed in the vast burning regions; the sacrifices that can never be vvritten nor ever be known; the divine love that prompted self-ob-literation that some one, dearer than very self, might live. Mothers covering with their bodies the prostrate forms of their little ones that the cruel flames might not touch them, wetting the frail bodies while their own were on fire—who could view such scenes, who think of them, them, without feeling the sublimity of our common nature? And then the tragedy—the profound horror of it all—mothers, fathers, children, brothers, sisters, neighbors and friends, all standing in a raging ocean of tiro; hopeful until their very breaths became as furnace draughts, and then turned with anguished gaze from earth to heaven, falling at length into the sleep of forgetfulness and painlessness. How cruel it all was, how swift, and how terrible! A few hours aud the fiery holocaust was over; nearly one

thousand lives were wiped out and over $10,000,000 worth of property was destroyed. The survivors, dazed, suffering and despairing, stood amid their ruins and their dead, while above, veiling the brightness of the sun, hung clouds of smoke—the fringe of the fiery tempest past. Death and ruin

reigned.

A. M. DICKINSON.

LOADING THE BODIES OF FIRE VICTIMS FOR REMOVAL TO BURIAL GROUND.

HOW A PAIR OF HORSES WERE FOUND.

THE ONLY HOUSE LEFT BETWEEN PINE CITY AND MISSION CREEK.

ALL THAT IS LEFT OF HINCELEY.

LEAPED FROM THE TRAIN INTO THE FIRE.

THE GRAVEL PIT EAST OF HINCKLEY, WHERE MANY TOOK REFUGE