Great Chicago Fire, Chicago, IL (1871)

Great Chicago Fire, Chicago, IL (1871)

Probably few infernos have been as famous as the one that ravaged much of Chicago in October, 1871, leaving more that 17,000 structures burned and 90,000 people homeless. Fortunately, it spread slowly enough that fewer than 300 died in the flames, but that’s of little consolation to those who were forced to face a cold Midwestern winter without shelter as a result. While there is no doubt the fire started in a barn on the O’Leary property at 137 DeKoven Street, there is no evidence it was caused by the poor woman’s cow kicking over a lantern. (That story was made up newspaper reporter who later admitted he did so because he thought it made for more “colorful” copy. Modern researchers instead have come up with a hypothesis that it may have actually been started by a transient smoking in the barn and inadvertently setting the hay inside alight.) In any case, like the London fire of 1666, the fire paved the way for a new and improved Chicago to rise from the ashes that would within a few short decades make it the great metropolis it is today. It also led to much needed firefighting reforms that would one day make Chicago’s fire department one of the best in the country and be a template by which other large city fire departments would base their own procedures. Not bad work for one bad bovine.