The Great Fire.
Everything was thus flourishing and prosperous—the “Big Bonanza” was yielding its millions, and several other mines were working great and rich bodies of ore—when Virginia City was overwhelmed by a great calamity.
On the morning of October 26, 1875, a fire broke out in a frame lodging-house on A Street, in the western part of the town, just above all the great business blocks, and in a few hours all in an area of half a mile square was laid in ashes. Before the fire was subdued no fewer than 2,000 buildings—including mills, hoisting works, churches, business houses, and structures of all kinds—were swept away. Hundreds of families were left homeless and destitute. Owing to the early hour at which the fire started (six o’clock), and the fearful rapidity with which it spread in all directions, few persons were able to save any of their goods or valuables. In all, property to the value of over $10,000,000 was destroyed. Many great and destructive fires had before swept through and devastated the city, but this was the greatest ever experienced in the place. Scores of buildings that had always been rated as fire-proof melted away in the fervent heat like frost in the rays of the morning sun.
Almost in the start the court-house, the building of the Washoe Club, the International Hotel, and several other large buildings, were ignited and began vomiting pillars of flame that scattered sparks and cinders far and wide. As the fire progressed the millions of feet of lumber and timbers and the thousands of cords of wood about the mining works made fires that could not be successfully combated, and which nothing could withstand. At the Consolidated Virginia Hoisting Works and Mill alone there were on fire at the same moment, and in one mass, 1,250,000 feet of lumber and timbers, and 800 cords of pine wood, not to speak of the two great buildings, and all the stores they contained; also the adjoining assay office, and contents. Across the street the freight and passenger depots of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad Company were sending up immense pillars of flame, while just south Piper’s Opera House, an immense frame structure filled with all manner of very inflammable material, was a volcano, vomiting destruction on all sides. Between and about these large structures a score or more of smaller buildings were belching flames. This was the scene at but one spot. A few rods to the southward three tall churches (Catholic, Methodist, and Episcopal) were sending tongues of flame into the very clouds, amid whole acres of smaller buildings that formed a tumultuous sea of fire. At the same time to the northward the Ophir works, with fifty smaller structures, were wrapped in flame. In the same fierce way the fire was raging over half a mile square of the very heart of the town. Although there were scores of narrow escapes, only two persons lost their lives in the fire, and two or three were afterwards killed by falling walls.
To rebuild the town at once was the universal determination. The insurance on the property destroyed amounted to $2,500,000 (the loss at the Bonanza Mines alone was $1,461,000), which was something to begin with; besides many persons whose property was destroyed had plenty of money left with which to rebuild. There was not a moment’s delay. The next morning the work of clearing away ruins preparatory to putting up new buildings was begun in all parts of the city, water being thrown upon the red-hot bricks to so cool them that they could be handled. Rebuilding began the morning after the fire, and hardly ceased day or night until all the ground of the burnt district had been again covered. The big mining companies were especially active. Although engaged in rebuilding the mills and works destroyed, the Consolidated Virginia Mining Company paid its regular dividends of $10 a share in November and December, the two amounting to $2,160,000. In less than thirty days from the time of the fire new works replaced those destroyed by fire, and the machinery was in place and ore hoisted on Thanksgiving-day. In sixty days after the fire the business streets of the city were rebuilt, and with larger and finer structures than those that had been destroyed. The whole burnt district was so soon covered with new buildings that strangers arriving in the city looked about them in surprise and asked, “Where was your big fire?” That was a busy time on the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, no fewer than forty-five trains a day passing over the road during the great building rush. But for the railroad the city and mining works could not have been rebuilt that year.