A Short History of Virginia City by Ronald M. James Susan A. James

Author:Ronald M. James, Susan A. James [Ronald M. James, Susan A. James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, United States, State & Local, West (AK; CA; CO; HI; ID; MT; NV; UT; WY), Travel, West, Mountain (AZ; CO; ID; MT; NM; NV; UT; WY), Social Science, Sociology, Urban
ISBN: 9780874179484
Google: miyVDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
Published: 2014-09-15T02:47:45+00:00

Chapter Four

Disaster and Rebirth

During the night of October 25, 1875, the wind howled. Those familiar with Virginia City and its famed Washoe Zephyrs had experienced this before. It had been a dry summer, and many might have looked at the unsettled night as a sign that rain or snow was on its way. Indeed, it was a harbinger of the first winter storm. But the wind would come to represent something much more than that.

At five thirty the next morning, before the sun rose on October 26, a drunk miner returned to his room at “Crazy Kate” Shea's boardinghouse on A Street. He lit a kerosene lamp and knocked it over, starting a blaze that soon engulfed his room and the entire boardinghouse. With the structure fully consumed, the wind began its work, rushing the flames from building to building and block to block.

As a means of conserving water, the Virginia City Water Company regularly turned off its system in the early morning hours. Consequently, the first firefighters to arrive on the scene went to fire hydrants and found them dry. Some frantically tried to rouse an official from the company to charge the system while others used whatever they could to battle the flames. There was little that could be done. Property owners desperately moved furniture and other possessions away from the raging fire, placing them in streets that seemed out of danger, only to see the disaster outpace them and incinerate what they thought they had saved.

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