The night the town burned: the great fire of 1872

September 5, 1872 · the business district

The night: Mishawaka's first great unmade day was a fire. On the night of September 5, 1872 — the fire broke out at 7:45 p.m., in Peter J. De Kever's account in the city's commissioned history — a downtown of wood-frame buildings, hay, and open flames, in hot, dry conditions and a strong wind, burned beyond the means at hand to stop it. The National Register nomination for Fire Station No. 4 measures the result: the fire destroyed nearly 90 percent of the business district, the town hall among it — and in the town hall, the town's hand engine, so that the fire consumed the means of fighting it. The one hand pump was of little use even with fire apparatus sent from Elkhart and South Bend to aid. As a disaster the night is the young town's largest single event of the nineteenth century; as a civic experience it was total — the commercial heart of a village of some thousands, gone between evening and morning.

What the town did with it: The fire's consequences are the surrounding record's: the water works of 1873–74 were built in its ashes, and the town's fire establishment was never again allowed to rest on a single stored engine — the department's record is Fire & Safety's, told whole there. A second massive fire took the downtown again in 1886, and this time the purchase followed directly: a steam fire engine, bought for $900, and a new hose house on East Mishawaka Avenue near Sarah Street — the pattern Fire & Safety prints plainly, of a town buying its fire protection after its losses. The two conflagrations stand here as events at the size of the town's experience of them; the companies, the chiefs, and the stations are that section's.

Sources:

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History (the city's commissioned history) — the fire of September 5, 1872, breaking out at 7:45 p.m., fed by hot, dry conditions and a strong wind.
2. National Park Service, National Register registration form, Mishawaka Fire Station No. 4 — nearly 90 percent of the business district destroyed, the town hall and the stored engine with it; Elkhart and South Bend apparatus aiding; the second massive fire of 1886, the $900 steam engine, and the new hose house.
3. Fire & Safety section of this history — the fires as the department's record, the water works of 1873–74, and the volunteer establishment the paid department of 1904 replaced.