Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1901 — BIG BLAZE AT DAVENPORT. [ARTICLE]

BIG BLAZE AT DAVENPORT.

■lra Dm troys Mills. Uaksr aad Mastden css Worth •800,000. Fire laid waste an area of sawmill and residence property'in Davenport, lowa, Thursday evening equal to two ordinary city blocks. The flames started at 2:30 in the big piles of kindling wood of the Rock Island Fuel Company on th§ levee. The brisk breeze blowing carried the flames directly across the immense lumber yards of Weyerhauser & Denkmann, which soon were a mass of flames. The spread of the Are was so rapid that the workmen had barely time to desert the sdine losing their coats and dinner pails. The flames pushed their way into the adjoining residence district, closely settled with middle-class homes of an average value of a few thousand dollars each, from which the occupants escaped only with their lives and the clothing on their backs. Over fifty homes were burned, some tenements, resulting in 100 families being rendered homeless. Others deserted their homaq in the threatened district. Vacant houses all over town were filled with furniture removed from the imperiled district