The Great Seattle Fire was a fire that destroyed the entire central business district of

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

on June 6, 1889. The conflagration lasted for less than a day, burning through the afternoon and into the night, and during the same summer as the

Great Spokane Fire The Great Spokane Fire—known locally as The Great Fire—was a major fire which affected downtown Spokane, Washington (called "Spokane Falls" at the time) on August 4, 1889. It began just after 6:00 p.m. and destroyed the city's downtown c ...

and the Great Ellensburg Fire. Seattle quickly rebuilt using brick buildings that sat above the original street level. Its population swelled during reconstruction, becoming the largest city in the newly admitted state of Washington.

Early Seattle

In the fall of 1851, the

Denny Party The Denny Party is a group of American pioneers credited with founding Seattle, Washington. They settled at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. History A wagon party headed by Arthur A. Denny left Cherry Grove, Illinois on April 10, 1851. The part ...

arrived at

Alki Point Alki Point is a point jutting into Puget Sound, the westernmost landform in the West Seattle district of Seattle, Washington. Alki is the peninsular neighborhood on Alki Point. Alki was the original settlement in what was to become the city of S ...

in what is now the state of

. After spending a miserable winter on the western shores of

Elliott Bay Elliott Bay is a part of the Central Basin region of Puget Sound. It is in the U.S. state of Washington, extending southeastward between West Point in the north and Alki Point in the south. Seattle was founded on this body of water in the 1850s ...

, the party relocated to the eastern shores and established the settlement that would become Seattle. Early Seattle was dominated by the logging industry. The combination of a safe

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a na ...

and an abundance of

coniferous Conifers are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All ext ...

trees made Seattle the perfect location for shipping lumber to

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. In 1852,

Henry Yesler Henry Leiter Yesler (December 2, 1810 – December 16, 1892) was an entrepreneur and a politician, regarded as a founder of the city of Seattle. Yesler served two non-consecutive terms as Mayor of Seattle, and was the city's wealthiest resident ...

began construction of the first steam-powered mill in the Pacific Northwest. Because of the easy access to lumber, nearly every building was constructed of the affordable, but combustible timber. Additionally, because the area was at or below sea level, the fledgling town was a frequent victim of massive floods, requiring buildings to be built on wooden stilts. The town also used hollowed out scrap logs propped up on wooden braces as sewer and water pipes, increasing the combustible loading.

Events of the fire

Seattle fire of June 6, 1889, about one-half hour after the fire started

At approximately 2:20 pm on June 6, 1889, an accidentally overturned glue pot in a carpentry shop started the most destructive fire in the history of Seattle. The next day, the ''

Seattle Post-Intelligencer The ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'' (popularly known as the ''Seattle P-I'', the ''Post-Intelligencer'', or simply the ''P-I'') is an online newspaper and former print newspaper based in Seattle, Washington, United States. The newspaper was fo ...

'', operating out of temporary facilities in the wake of the fire, reported incorrectly that the incident began in "Jim McGough's paint shop, under Smith's boot and shoe store, at the corner of Front and Madison streets, in what was known as the Denny block"; This is an update of the earlier a correction two weeks later said that it "actually started in the Clairmont and Company cabinet shop, below McGough's shop in the basement of the Pontius building", but the original error was often repeated, including in Murray Morgan's bestselling Seattle history book ''Skid Road'' (1951). The pot was tipped over by John Back, a 24-year-old Swede. The fire soon spread to the wood chips and turpentine covering the floor. Back attempted to douse the fire with water which only served to spread the fire further. The fire department arrived by 2:45, but by that time the area was so smokey that the source of the fire could not be determined.

Spread of fire

Fed by the shop's timber and an unusually dry summer, the blaze erupted and shortly devoured the entire block. A nearby liquor store exploded, and the alcohol fueled the flames. The fire quickly spread north to the Kenyon block and the nearby Madison and Griffith blocks. Wooden boardwalks carried the flames across streets to ignite other blocks. A combination of ill-preparedness and unfortunate circumstances contributed to the great fire. Seattle's water supply was insufficient in fighting the giant inferno.

Fire hydrant A fire hydrant, waterplug, or firecock (archaic) is a connection point by which firefighters can tap into a water supply. It is a component of active fire protection. Underground fire hydrants have been used in Europe and Asia since at least t ...

s were sparsely located on every other street, usually connected to small pipes. There were so many hydrants in use during the fire that the water pressure was too weak to fight such a massive blaze. Seattle was also operated by a

volunteer fire department A volunteer fire department (VFD) is a fire department of volunteers who perform fire suppression and other related emergency services for a local jurisdiction. Volunteer and retained (on-call) firefighters are expected to be on call to respon ...

, which was competent, but inadequate in extinguishing the fire.

Magnitude of destruction

By the morning of June 7, the fire had burned 25 city blocks, including the entire business district, four of the city's wharves, and its

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a prep ...

terminals. The fire would be called the most destructive fire in the history of Seattle. Despite the massive destruction of property, few to no deaths occurred. Some claim a young boy named James Goin was killed in the blaze although no reliable records have been found from that time. However, there were fatalities during the cleanup process and over 1 million rodents were killed. Total losses were estimated at nearly $20 million ($ in dollars).

Reconstruction and recovery

Despite the magnitude of destruction, the rebuilding effort began quickly. Rather than starting over somewhere else, Seattle's citizens decided to rebuild. Seattle rebuilt from the ashes quickly, and the fire killed many rats and other

vermin Vermin ( colloquially varmint(s) or varmit(s)) are pests or nuisance animals that spread diseases or destroy crops or livestock. Since the term is defined in relation to human activities, which species are included vary by region and enterp ...

, thereby eliminating the city's rodent problems. A new building ordinance resulted in a downtown of

brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

and

stone In geology, rock (or stone) is any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter. It is categorized by the minerals included, its Chemical compound, chemical composition, and the way in which it is formed. Rocks ...

buildings, rather than wood. In the year following the fire Seattle's population actually grew by nearly 20,000 to 40,000 inhabitants from the influx of people helping to recreate the city. Supplies and funds came from all over the West Coast to support the relief effort. The population increase made Seattle the largest city in Washington, making it a leading contender in becoming the terminus of the Great Northern Railway.

Post-fire reform

Seattle made many improvements in response to the fire. The

Seattle Fire Department The Seattle Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services to the city of Seattle, Washington, United States. The department is responsible for an area of , including of waterfront, with a population of 713,700. There is ...

was officially established four months later to replace a volunteer organization with a paid force containing new firehouses and a new chief. The city took control of the water supply, increasing the number of hydrants and adding larger pipes. The advent of brick buildings to downtown Seattle was one of the many architectural improvements the city made in the wake of the fire. New city ordinances set standards for the thickness of walls and required "division walls" between buildings. These changes became principal features of post-fire construction and are still visible in Seattle's Pioneer Square district today, the present-day location of the fire. At Pioneer Square, guided tours are also available to paying customers. Also at this location, visitors can tour the Seattle Underground, where they can visit the original street level (now basement level) of buildings and storefronts that were built after the fire.

References

External links

University of Washington Libraries
Austin, Charles W., ''The great Seattle fire of June 6, 1889: containing a succinct and complete account of the greatest conflagration on the Pacific coast.''
University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections

Boyd and Braas Photographs
88 photographs, ca. 1888–1893, of early Seattle, including the waterfront and street scenes, the Great Seattle fire of June 6, 1889, Madrona and Leschi parks, Native American hop pickers, and portraits of Seattle pioneers.

Photographs (ca. 1850s-1940) depicting activities in Washington state, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska and the Klondike.
Prosch Washington Views Album
207 images (ca. 1858-1903) collected and annotated by Thomas Prosch, one of Seattle's earliest pioneers. Images document scenes in Eastern Washington especially Chelan and vicinity, images of the waterfront, businesses, residences, and Seattle's early history including the Great Seattle Fire of 1889; see: pp. 48–56.
Seattle Photographs
Ongoing database of over 1,700 historical photographs of Seattle with special emphasis on images depicting neighborhoods, recreational activities including baseball, the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, "The Great Snow of 1916", theaters and transportation.
HistoryLink.org
John Caldbick, The Great Seattle Fire, Part 1, essay 21090
Seattle, WA The Great Seattle Fire, Jun 1889
at GenDisasters.com {{Coord, 47, 36, 06, N, 122, 20, 03, W, format=dms, display=title, type:city_region:US-WA 1889 in Washington (state) History of Seattle

1889 fires in the United States 1889 disasters in the United States Fires in Washington (state)