As months go, there is a lot going on in October. We are deep into the World Series and high school football season is nearly half over. College and professional football games seem to be on every channel of the television and tailgate parties are all around. The scent of burning leaves and the smell of evening wiener roast fires fill the air. 

Beside all of these activities and events, the month of October has another event that gets talked about in Chillicothe every year. It isn’t a happy event, but older readers and especially those of us who follow our city’s history, ask about or talk about the “Big Halloween Night Fire.” 

“What big fire?” You ask. “Oh, you know, the one that burned down half the city on Halloween night a bunch of years ago.” When was that? Halloween night in 1890. Many histories record fires set by pranksters on Halloween night and generally are dealt with easily without major damages. The fire in the City of Chillicothe that night wasn’t one of those that participants joke about over the weeks that followed. 

At about midnight on October 31, 1890, Mr. King was closing up his saloon, when his wife asked him to make sure the rear door was locked. As he looked outside across Pine Street, he saw fly-ash wafting up into the cool night sky. King operated a saloon in a two-story house on the northeast corner of Second and Pine Street, with living quarters over the tavern. He looked closer and saw the ash rising from Robert Hallcock’s City Livery stable situated on the west side of the alley across Pine Street. There was no cell phone back then so notice of a fire had to be done, face-to-face. Response to begin to fight a fire was an individual effort at first before other citizens could assemble and form bucket lines as the local fire wagon could be brought to the scene by horses. 

In this instance, a Chillicothe Volunteer Fire Brigade was equipped with a chemical fire wagon garaged in a building behind City Hall a block south of the fire. As is today, the volunteer firefighters had to go to the garage, hitch up a team, and go to the fire. The time needed to get the fire team to the fire was not accurately recorded, but newspaper accounts indicate that the bucket brigade effort was unable to suppress the fire, and the fire soon spread westward to the carriage shed immediately west of the stable. The Daugherty Saloon, next to the carriage shed, stood on the S.E. corner of Second and Pine and became the next victim of the fire.

By this time, every able-bodied person in the downtown tried to fight the fire or help people to remove personal and business property from buildings surrounding the raging fire. The calm night air turned into a venturi, sucking ash and embers high into the air which spewed embers across Second Street as well as Pine Street. Most buildings were constructed of wood and were easy prey of the smoldering embers. The arrival of the fire wagon turned out to be of little effect. The fire had progressed well beyond the capacity of the fire wagon and was further hampered in trying to save other buildings due to property owners arguing over which building to save. An alarm was sent to Peoria and a train was loaded with equipment and sent north to Chillicothe on the Rock Island line. That good intention was defeated by insufficient water pressure and a defective hose connection. Nature won out and the fire steadily worked its way both south and north on both sides of Second Street. The buildings on the East side of Second Street south of Pine to the north wall of the building we know as Odie’s were lost and on the west side of Second south of Pine, all structures between Pine and the north wall of the old Ben Franklin Store, now Little Shop of Hoarders, also burned. Every building on both sides of Second Street north of Pine Street to Chestnut Street succumbed to the ravaging fire. In its coverage of the fire, The Chillicothe Bulletin reported that at least thirty-four buildings were destroyed that housed 60 business and residences.

Just as would be today, many theories on how the fire started rose as quickly as the fire spread. A version of the theory of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow starting the infamous Chicago fire of October 8, 1871, quickly became a leading topic. The source and origin of the fire was never determined. The loft was full of straw hay, which kindled the intensity of the fire. Mr. Hallcock explained there were thirteen horses in the stable, but no cows. Only one horse was saved. Several months after the fire, C.A. Nelson sold the property to Hallcock one block north of the fire location on Chestnut Street where Hallcock built another stable on the east side of the same alley. The location of Hallcock’s new stable is where the IGA Store was and is now owned by J.T. Fennell. 

There are many other stories that grew out of that tragic event that deserve to be told and can be found in the Historical Society files. The people who lived through that ordeal, didn’t wilt away, they took their losses and regrouped. Some of the businessmen actually cleared away smoldering piles of ashes to set up temporary offices and continued to run their businesses less than twenty-four hours after the fire.