Postcards: Fire!

I’ve noted before that it’s hard to describe the enthusiasm present in Fallon during the first decade of the 20th Century. “Boosters,” including the local newspapers, sang songs of praise to the progressiveness of the town, calling for incorporation and what would come with it: sewer, water, and electricity. Even the flood of 1907 could not dampen the spirits for long. The businesses mopped up the mud, united to repair the damage to the courthouse, ordered new goods, and moved enthusiastically forward, with a community spirit that ushered in Fallon’s incorporation in 1908. Then came a much more devastating disaster, this time in the form of fire.

The Churchill County Standard of May 19, 1910, ran the headline “Fallon Has Disastrous Fire: West Side of Maine Street From Williams Store to Douglass Building Reduced to Ashes.” The Williams Store was housed in a stone structure where the Nugget parking lot is now located. The Douglass Building, also constructed of stone, was located in the block south of the present Nugget building. A cigarette that was dropped through the boardwalk in front of the People’s Café, in the Williams building, reportedly started the fire.

According to the Standard, “The fire was discovered a few minutes before ten Saturday evening (May 14) by W.T. Scates, shortly after nightwatchman Knox had made his rounds, and so rapid was the progress of the conflagration that it had traversed the more than three hundred feet intervening between the Williams and Douglass buildings, licking up buildings like so much tinder...leaving a bed of embers that were guarded for the next thirty six hours by many watchful eyes....” Destroyed were the post office, Black and Ferguson’s Stationery Store, the Palace Saloon and Cafe, Roy Reed’s Barber Shop, the Cedar Brook Saloon and Café, the Northern Saloon, the Goldfield Club Saloon, the Pioneer Barber Shop, Collin’s Hardware Store, a tailor shop, and Tom Woodliff’s Merchandise Store.

That the progress of the fire had been stopped at all seemed like a miracle. “Time and again the flames would sweep halfway across Maine Street; then again, the slight breeze would veer for an instant and threaten the buildings on Carson Street.” The Standard described at length the heroism of Postmistress Callie Ferguson who, with help from other “heroes,” scooped up the mail from the post office and carried it to safety.

Beyond the descriptions of flame, embers, and ashes lay another story that seems emblematic of early Fallon: instant recovery and movement forward. Businesses which had vanished, literally overnight, sprang back up within a few days in new locations.

“The Northern is doing business at the old Oberon stand in the Wightman building, while one door south Tom Woodliff will again be dealing out dry goods and clothing in a day or two, or as soon as he can get his insurance adjusted and his stock moved. The Palace is even now catering to thirsty throats in the People’s store building.”

Everywhere, lemons were turned into lemonade. The Standard opined that “the type of structure destroyed was poor and the elimination of fire traps alone on Maine street has made it possible for the council to establish a fire limit, prescribing the type of future business building for the town, thus insuring a more substantial and beautiful little city....In the future, nothing of a combustible nature can enter the construction of any structure within the limits defined by the council. Another service rendered by the fire was the elimination of the unsanitary outhouses and filthy vaults...

Where the wooden buildings once stood, will rise out of the ashes, concrete, brick and stone structures, and the individual’s misfortune will in the end work to the community’s good fortune.”

As one example, A.R. Jeffrey, occupying a storefront on Maine, apparently had supplied water to the fledgling city (before a municipal water system had been installed). The paper reported that “the embers were still hot when A.R. Jeffrey began the work of clearing away the debris that marked the place where the water plant stood. Working Sunday and Monday, a connection was made joining the Jeffrey water mains with the Williams water supply, thus ensuring the business district an adequate supply....he proposes to erect a fine cement building.”

Hence, fireproof edifices of stone, brick and cement quickly replaced the wooden storefronts of frontier Fallon.

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Michon Mackedon is a native of Fallon and a retired professor of English and Humanities (WNC). She loves her family, her home, her dog, reading, writing, making good food, and sipping a glass of fine white wine. Beyond that, she refuses to be categorized.