BURNED ACROSS THE STATE

James Langworth did not get much sleep the night of October 8, 1871. As he lay in the bedroom of his farmhouse four miles south of the Saginaw County village of St. Charles, the wood smoke that had stung his eyes for a week nearly suffocated him. Langworth knew the forest fire was burning closer, but he relied on the half-mile-wide swamp that separated his farm from the woods to keep it away. He thought about the hundreds of rabbits, woodchucks, raccoons and squirrels that had milled around his barnyard that evening, so bewildered and blinded by the smoke they did not even fear man.

Shortly after midnight, Langworth felt the wind change direction and quicken. An hour later he could hear the roar of the fire and the crash of great trees toppling over. By 6 a.m., the high winds had fanned the fire around the swamp. Langworth gathered up a few personal belongings in a feather tick and opened his door. The smoke was so dense he could not see 10 feet away, and the air was "as hot as the atmosphere of an engine room."

Suddenly his barn and haystack exploded into flames. The gale-force wind sent thousands of sparks and firebrands into the air. Langworth dropped his bundle and ran for his life. Somehow he found the wagon road to the village and stumbled blindly down it. The fire raced close behind, showering him with burning debris. Then a sheet of flames swept across the road in front. The inferno surrounded him on all sides but one. He plunged into the woods leaping wildly over burning piles of leaves. It seemed as though the entire state of Michigan was on fire.

Much of it was. All summer long the northern United States had suffered one of the worst droughts on record. Farmers had watched their seedlings shrivel in the parched soil. The woods were dry and the vast stretches of cutover pine lands covered with brittle tree tops were like tinder. For months forest fires had raged throughout northern Wisconsin and Michigan. Billowing clouds of yellow smoke had produced memorable blood-red sunsets and caused the street lamps in Chicago to be lit an hour earlier than usual.

On October 8th, Mrs. O'Leary's cow or some other cause started a fire that leveled Chicago. That same evening a forest fire fed by hurricane -strength winds swept over the city of Peshtigo, Wisconsin and more than 1,000 victims died within hours. These disasters eclipsed Michigan's fiery holocaust in the national press, but the Michigan fires were more devastating in terms of property loss.

Fire ravished much of the Lake Michigan coast from St. Joseph to Manistee on October 8th. Most of the city of Holland, with the exception of the Hope College campus area, burned to the ground. A nasty rumor surfaced that a group of Hollanders refused to combat the brush fires that threatened the city from the southwest because it "would be wrong to do any work" on the Sabbath. Miraculously, only one person died in the conflagration, but the prosperous city was reduced to rubble in two hours.

One hundred miles to the north the rip-roaring lumbering town of Manistee faced a similar fate. Lumberjacks and townspeople battled scattered blazes in the city throughout the day. As with most lumbermill sites, flammable material was everywhere. Huge stacks of cordwood lined the docks, and extensive lumberyards with enormous mounds of sawdust dotted the village. The sidewalks were made of white pine and even the roads had been paved with sawdust., That evening a gale force wind blew in an irresistible fire storm from the south that engulfed the city in flames. Over 1,000 people wandered homeless through the ruins the next morning.

The forest fires burned a swath of destruction straight across the state to Lake Huron. Lansing escaped destruction due largely to the efforts of Agricultural College students who turned out en masse to battle the flames. Much of the forests of Midland and Gratiot Counties were reduced to smouldering stumps. The Saginaw River Valley fared little better. The fire that had sent Langworth fleeing into the woods raged from St. Charles to Birch Run. Langworth stumbled into the outskirts of St. Charles, his face blistered and clothing burned full of holes, to encounter the entire village mobilized to protect their holdings.

Michigan's thumb area was particularly hard hit. The lakeshore settlements of Grindstone City, Huron City, Port Hope, and White Rock were all but wiped out. Most of Huron, Tuscola and Sanilac Counties went up in flames.

At Forestville John Kent and his wife left their two children in their dwelling as they beat back brush fires. Unknown to them, another fire from the rear reached the house. By the time they heard the children's screams, the smoke had become so dense they could not find their way back. Kent and his wife narrowly escaped by running to the lake, but as he told a Port Huron reporter, "It was awful, sir, to hear that screaming from those burning children, and it was dreadful to go away and leave them roasting there."

Undoubtedly, many other backwoods families perished and were never accounted for. But the actual loss of life in Michigan was remarkably small. Many miraculous escapes were recorded. Entire families survived by lowering themselves into wells. Others took to Lake Huron in boats and, despite the rough waters, were later rescued.

One small vessel containing nine children from Rock Falls, a Huron County ghost town, floated for three days all the way across Lake Huron to Canada. All but one child survived the ordeal.

The inhabitants of White Rock fought the blaze all day Sunday, but when the fierce gale fanned the fire out of control they ran for the lake. For eight hours they huddled in the ice cold surf, adults taking turns holding the children. When the fire died down they warmed themselves by the embers of their village until they were rescued by a ship.

Michigan's death toll numbered at least 10 and probably many more. The fire raged across an estimated 2 1/2 million acres of land and destroyed at least 4 billion feet of prime timber.