Great Hinckley Fire

The Great Hinckley Fire was a conflagration in the pine forests of the U.S. state of Minnesota that ignited on September 1, 1894, which burned an area of at least 200,000 acres (810 km²; 310 sq mi)^[1] (perhaps more than 250,000 acres [1,000 km²; 390 sq mi]), including the town of Hinckley. The official death count was 418; the actual number of fatalities was likely higher.^[2] Other sources put the death toll at 476.^[3]

Great Hinckley Fire
Date(s)	September 1, 1894 12:00 - 7:00pm (CDT)
Location	Pine County, near Hinckley, Minnesota, US
Statistics
Burned area	200,000 acres (810 km2)
Land use	Logging
Impacts
Deaths	418+
Ignition
Cause	Drought

Description

After a two-month summer drought, combined with very high temperatures, several small fires started in the pine forests of Pine County, Minnesota. Two of the fires in particular ignited along the railroad tracks southwest and south of Hinckley, in Quamba and Brown's Hill, respectively. The fires' spread apparently was due to the then-common method of lumber harvesting, wherein trees were stripped of their branches in place; these branches littered the ground with flammable debris. Also contributing was a temperature inversion that trapped the gases from the fires. The scattered blazes united into a firestorm.^[4] The temperature rose to at least 2,000 °F (1,100 °C). Barrels of nails melted into one mass, and in the yards of the Eastern Minnesota Railroad, the wheels of the cars fused with the rails.^[5] Some residents escaped by climbing into wells, ponds, or the Grindstone River. Others clambered aboard trains that had come in on the Eastern Minnesota Railway and St. Paul & Duluth Railroad lines from The North.

The Eastern Minnesota Train

At 2:45 in the afternoon, The Eastern Minnesota Railway's Superior-Hinckley freight train came into town from the north. This train consisted of Eastern engine #105, three empty boxcars and a caboose. It was being run by engineer Edward Barry, who already sensed that something was wrong. When Barry pulled in, the railyards beyond the depot had already begun to burn. The town itself appeared to be empty (many residents had gone off to fight the fire on the south side of Hinckley). A passenger train consisting of Great Northern engine #125 and six coaches being run by engineer William Best was due to come in behind his freighter at 3:25, and Barry hoped that it was on time. Much to his relief it was, and as this train came to a halt at the station a small crowd had already gathered to board.

The train's conductor, George Powers, went into the station to inquire about the conditions of the track south of town. After realizing that it was impassable, powers spotted Barry's freighter sitting nearby on the sidetrack and had an idea. He proposed hooking the two trains together and using Best's coaches and Barry's boxcars to carry refugees to safety. Both crews agreed, and Barry reversed off of the sidetrack and attached his engine to the rear coach of William Best's train. It was around this time that flames burned through the hose of the Hinckley fire department's water pumper, rendering it useless. Residents, now realizing that the town was doomed, immediately rushed for the train. A great deal of lives were saved by William Best when he applied the airbrakes as Barry tried to pull out. This held the train long enough to save hundreds of lives before Powers ordered the train to move off.

Running in reverse, they pulled out of the threatened town just as the fire began destroying it, stopping first on the other side of the Grindstone River to pick up more refugees before continuing to Sandstone. The woods between Sandstone and Hinckley were aflame, and flames licked at the sides of the cars and engine cabs, melting off paint in many places. Upon arriving in Sandstone, they made an unsuccessful attempt to warn the town's residents before crossing the burning trestle over the Kettle River, which collapsed mere seconds after the train crossed it. Thick smoke made visibility impossible, and with both engines running in reverse there was no headlight to illumunate the tracks. The train was chased by the flames for a considerable distance, and made brief stops at several other logging villages up the tracks, but few boarded the train. Later that night, the train made it to the safety of Superior with over 800 people jammed onboard.

The St. Paul & Duluth Train.

James Root, the engineer of the St. Paul & Duluth Railroad's No. 4 "Duluth Limited" train, heading for Saint Paul from Duluth, rescued nearly 300 people by backing up his train nearly five miles to Skunk Lake, where the passengers took cover in the swamp from the fire. Root had halted his train one mile north of town as refugees began a desperate sprint up the tracks away from the fire, and encountered his train. As he began to reverse an explosion (theorized to be from the Brennan Lumber Company catching fire all at once) lit the front portion of the train on fire and shattered the cab windows, cutting Root severely. Root was rendered unconscious at one point from blood loss, but his fireman splashed him with a bucket of water, and he revived. As the fire enveloped the train, Root threw open the throttle and made a mad dash to safety, going so fast that eventually they outran the fire by 10 minutes.^[6][7]

According to the Hinckley Fire Museum:

Because of the dryness of the summer, fires were common in the woods, along railroad tracks and in logging camps where loggers would set fire to their slash to clean up the area before moving on. Some loggers, of course left their debris behind, giving any fire more fuel on which to grow. Saturday, September 1st, 1894 began as another oppressively hot day with fires surrounding the towns and two major fires that were burning about five miles (8.0 km) to the south. To add to the problem, the temperature inversion that day added to the heat, smoke and gases being held down by the huge layer of cool air above. The two fires managed to join together to make one large fire with flames that licked through the inversion finding the cool air above. That air came rushing down into the fires to create a vortex or tornado of flames which then began to move quickly and grew larger and larger turning into a fierce firestorm. The fire first destroyed the towns of Mission Creek and Brook Park before coming into the town of Hinckley. When it was over the Firestorm had completely destroyed six towns, and over 400 square miles (1,000 km²) lay black and smoldering. The firestorm was so devastating that it lasted only four hours but destroyed everything in its path.^[8]

Aftermath

The fire destroyed the town of Hinckley (which at the time had a population of over 1,400) as well as the smaller nearby settlements of Mission Creek, Pokegama, Sandstone, Miller, and Partridge.^[2]

The exact number of fatalities is difficult to determine. The official coroner's report counted 413 dead while the fire's official monument notes 418.^[2][9] An unknown number of Native Americans and backcountry dwellers were also killed in the fire; bodies continued to be found years later.^[10][11] It is second only to the 1918 Cloquet Fire (where 453 were killed) as the deadliest in Minnesota history, and the third deadliest in U.S. history, after the Peshtigo Fire.

Memorials

The Hinckley Fire Museum

Today, a 37-mile (60 km) section of the Willard Munger State Trail, from Hinckley to Barnum, is a memorial to the fire and the devastation it caused. In the town of Hinckley, on Highway 61, the Hinckley Fire Museum is located in the former Northern Pacific Railway depot. It is located a few feet north of the site of the former depot, which burned down in the fire. It is open from May 1 until the end of October.^[12]

Lutheran Memorial Cemetery in Hinckley has a historical marker and granite obelisk as a memorial to those who perished in the fire. 248 residents of Hinckley perished in the fire and are buried in a mass grave at this cemetery. Some are unidentified.

The Brook Park Cemetery on County Road 126, south of Minnesota State Highway 23, has an historical marker plaque and a memorial to the 23 fire victims of Brook Park, with a tall obelisk on top of a granite marker.^[13]

Boston Corbett

Thomas P. "Boston" Corbett, the Union soldier who killed John Wilkes Booth after Booth's assassination of Abraham Lincoln, is rumored to have died in the fire. His last known residence is believed to have been a forest settlement near Hinckley, and a "Thomas Corbett" is listed as one of the dead or missing.^[14][15][16] In September 2024, a presentation given to the 36th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences, showed that the man who died in the Hinckley fire was Thomas Gilbert Corbitt, originally from Steuben County, New York, and not Boston Corbett. Proofs included the Civil War "invalid" filing by Thomas G. Corbitt, dated September 19, 1890, in Minnesota and on the same document, the widow's filing on August 9, 1895. Another proof included a newspaper article from the September 24, 1894, edition of the Steuben Farmers Advocate, announcing that Thomas Corbitt, formerly of Thurston, Steuben County, New York, had perished in the Hinckley fire.^{[17][better source needed]}

See also

• Baudette fire of 1910
• Cloquet fire of 1918
• Lahaina Fire of 2023
• Peshtigo fire of 1871
• Thumb Fire of 1881