Great Chicago Fire

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"Late on night, when we were all in bed,
Mrs. O'Learylit a lantern in the shed.
Her cow kicked it over, then winked her eye and said
'There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight' "
-Chicago folksong (Whatorwhocausedthegreatchicagofire)

For three days Chicago was filled with chaos and destruction as a wicked flame tore through the city. As it ripped through the city it left people injured and houses demolished leaving people homeless and even death. There was nothing they could do to stop it, people and firemen quaked with terror as they lied in its wake attempting to stop it. To get out of the fires burning wrath, people traveled across town to get to Lincoln Park, and they even jumped into the rivers and lakes to avoid its grasp. The Chicago Fire was the worst thing that had ever happened in Chicago's history because all of the devastation in its wake.
The fire of October 8, 1871, that started atis known for being the Great Chicago Fire and it earned it. The fire had annihilated seventy-three miles of street, destroyed 17,500 buildings, causing $200 million of property damage, made 100,000 homeless and claimed 300 souls. How it started nobody knows, but they blamed Mrs. Catherine O'Leary and her cows. In 1871, Chicago suffered from a huge drought from early July until October with less than three inches of rain fall (DestroyedTheEntireCity). It was very dry year leaving the ground barren and the wooden city susceptible to fires (History Files). Over the year of 1871 an average of two fires sprang to life every day, but in the past week twenty fires popped to life (U.S.History). On October 7 a big fire popped to life which firemen put out with little to no effort, and they thought they could battle any fire until they ha...

... middle of paper ...

...fire ended up leaving things in piles of smoldering ash. The city of Chicago didn't give up instead they rebuilt and rose from the ash like the mighty pheonix after a horrible death.

Works Cited

http://www.chicagohs.org/history/fire.html http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215480/fire.htm http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/10/what-caused-the-great- chicago-fire/ http://history1800s.about.com/od/urbanconditions/a/chicagofire.htm http://britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/110459/Chicago-fire-of-1871 http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/735486.html http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/news/chicago-fire-1871-and-great-rebuilding/?ar_a=1 http://www.u- shistory.com/pages/h1854.html http://gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/politics-reform/resources/great-chicago- fire-1871-story-human-tragedy-and-triumph
http://www.nationalcenter.org/ChicagoFire.html

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