We've reached October 8-10, 1871 in the simulation - the Chicago fire. Although the loss of life was relatively small for such a large fire (estimated at 200-300), one-third of the city of Chicago, at the time America's fifth-largest city, was destroyed. In this way it is probably relatively comparable to Hurricane Katrina - serious loss of life, but even more serious property destruction.
Ironically, it was not even the worst fire in the Midwest to start on October 8. That same day, the Peshtigo Fire near Green Bay, Wisconsin burned an area twice the size of Rhode Island and utterly destroyed 12 frontier communities. That fire killed several thousand people, hundreds of whom were simply buried in mass graves because there was no one left alive who could identify them. It also jumped Green Bay to burn the thumb of Wisconsin - to get an idea of how crazy that is, check out the map on this page.
Supposedly, the Rockford club was on its way to Chicago to play a game sometime during the fire, and they turned around and went home when they saw the flames. No telling whether that story is true (if it is, they never made up the game), but certainly most of the Chicago players lost everything - their homes, their ballpark, their life savings if it was in Chicago banks. The club finished out the season but dropped out of National Association play for the next couple seasons, as everyone's efforts were needed to rebuild the city.
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One of the more interesting aspects to this, from a baseball perspective anyway, is that after a few weeks the Chicago club attempted to finish the season. They were using uniforms and equipment donated by the other Association clubs and playing "home" games at other ballparks, most notable Union Grounds in NYC.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Michael
Yeah. I also find it amazing how quickly Chicago reasserted itself as the center of major league baseball. After two years out of the league, within three years they were the dominant club on the scene. That seems particularly weird given that most of the players at that time were from New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. To them Chicago must have seemed pretty remote - like having a team in Hawaii or South Korea.
ReplyDeleteHoly crap. I looked at the map; the Peshtigo Fire was insane.
ReplyDeleteThree cities in Michigan (two of which were on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, and one on the "thumb" of Michigan) also burned that same day, which has led to 140 years of speculation about whether there was some kind of comet or meteor that caused the blazes. (Probably not; in Peshtigo, they were burning forest for agriculture when the winds took control of things.)
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, Peshtigo was pretty intense. All the death toll estimates are basically semi-educated guesses, since the fire wiped out not only the communities, but all their population records and families - basically, every record of their ever having existed.