The summer of 1871 was dry with near-drought conditions and created an atmosphere ideal for brush fires. Additionally, the risk of wildfires had been elevated by slash-and-burn farming methods as well as the lumber industry: due to the dry conditions, logs could not be sent down the river, so instead they were piled alongside. Debris from the cut trees dried up like tinder. Peshtigo town’s sawmill processed the timber and created large amounts of sawdust. Even with the buildup of logs, lumberjacks continued logging, using a popular method that involved burning tree stumps. At the same time a railroad was being built through the region, which also employed a similar method of burning a path to build the tracks. On 8 October 1871, brush fires began to combust in small pockets across the area. Adverse weather conditions created large gales which spread the brush fires into a large inferno. It devastated the towns of Peshtigo and Brussels and raged across northeastern Wisconsin and upper Michigan. In the end, the deadliest fire in the history of the United States consumed 2,400 square miles of woodland and settlements, taking up to 1,500 lives.
Contributed by Kimberly Kuxhause
Course: Modern Global Environmental History
Instructor: Dr. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg
University of Wisconsin–Madison, US
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- Pernin, Peter. The Great Peshtigo Fire: An Eyewitness Account.. Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1999.
- Gess, Denise, and William Lutz. Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003.
- Rutkow, Eric. American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation. New York: Scribner, 2012.