The 1911 Oscoda, Michigan Fire

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From an article that appeared in the Oscoda Press by editor Will McGillivray. It was titled, Oscoda and Au Sable Wiped Out by Fire. The article was preserved in the book “Log Marks” by Neil Thornton.

Oscoda and Au Sable Wiped Out by Fire

“Oscoda – Fire originating in adjacent forests and from sparks said to have been thrown by the locomotives of both the AuSable & Northwestern and the Detroit & Mackinac railway lines, devastated the twin towns of Oscoda and AuSable and that part of the community known as AuSable township, Tuesday, July 11.

Business blocks, mills, factories, and residence houses were destroyed to the number of about 600. Five lives were lost in the disaster: Francois Clairmount, an aged musician; William Batts, yardman at the Hotel Elliott; Samuel Rosenthal, merchant; Jacques Lavoie, box maker, who died of burns received, and an unidentified peddler. Only for the timely arrival of the steamer Niko, of the Edward Hines fleet, Captain Meyer, of Tonawanda, the loss of live would have been appalling.

Two hundred and eighty persons, most of them women and children, were hemmed in on the lake shore, to which wings of fire had already spread on the north and south with the van of the conflagration moving down between. All but strong swimmers would undoubtedly have perished had not the boat arrived.

The forest fire which had been burning since the preceding Sunday in the neighborhood of the new chemical plant was the cause of the burning of two houses in West AuSable early in the day. Sparks from the engine of the train known as the “Lincoln Stub” are said to have been responsible for the fire which burned the H. M. Loud Sons’ yards and plant. The big fire which bore down on Oscoda at four in the afternoon in a great wall of flame, started near the AuSable and Northwestern tracks at the Barlow farm.

Within five minutes, twenty houses were ablaze on Main Street, and when it became evident that Oscoda was doomed, men ran up and down urging the women and children to hurry to the Loud Company’s south dock, at which the steamer “Niko” had just arrived. In the meantime, residents of “Shore Town” were flocking to the junction of the docks at the water’s edge. When the first crowd of women and children reached the boat at the end of the pier, men already on board were crying to the captain to “pull out”. Eli Herrick, Peter McPhail and others of Oscoda and Charles Jahraus of Tawas City, stood by the lines declaring that they must not be thrown off until all who could be saved were taken on board.

When the boat left the dock, her cabins were on fire fore and aft, and a disastrous panic was narrowly averted. The refugees could not be landed at Tawas, on account of the heavy sea, and the boat finally docked at Bay City.

With the fire, which had entered at the west and early in the day, quenched AuSable seemed safe from the devastation underway in Oscoda, until the wind changed at 7 o’clock.

Turning like a horse at the starting line, the flames set a terrific pace from the north to the south limits, the buildings sloughing before them as babbit melts and settles in a heated crucible. The inhabitants scurried before it like a herd of cattle amuck.

Far out on the sands of the shore they ran helter skelter, void of dignity, all but one. Judge Connine, of the Iosco County Circuit Court, was the last in retreat. Appearing and disappearing in the front volumes of smoke, he walked with an extended stride, but even in the vortex, dignified. On the sands, in the cold north wind, social caste was lost and rich and poor huddled together until sunrise, in mutual discomfort.

When the sun rose Wednesday morning, there was no one alive near the scene of the calamity but shuddered at the thought that hundreds of their neighbors had met a fearful death. When nightfall came and only four bodies had been found, there was a general feeling of relief, mingled with sorrow for the unfortunate ones.”