lling of logs and their cutting and grinding in the local saw mill, the production of wooden tubs, buckets and other items at the Peshtigo Co. woodenware factory, a sash, door and blind factory and surrounding commercial establishments, schools and churches, almost all made of wood.
The causes of the fire were both natural and manmade. Normally endowed with plentiful rain, northeastern Wisconsin suffered from an unusually dry summer in 1871. Small campfires were often left lit by hunters and Indians in the woods. Farmers took advantage of the drought to clear land, and loggers to harvest timber, starting many brush fires in the process. Nearby workers on the railroad started other fires and left "large piles of sawdust and waste, called slash, [which] built up in the forest" (Pernin 2). Fires sporadically broke up in different parts of the forest in the area during September and early October. According to Christianson, "flames licked at the outskirts many times, but fighting crews of volunteers beat bank the threatening tongues of fire" from Peshtigo itself (1).
During the day on October 8, Reverend Pernin noted several ominous signs to the west of the village: "thick smoke darkening the sky, the heavy, suffocating atmosphere, the mysterious silence filling the air" (4). Starting about 8:30 that evening and continuing on through the night, Peshtigo took on the visage of scenes from Dante's Inferno. Pernin observed "the crimson reflection in the western part of the sky was rapidly increasing" (1). The immediate cause of the conflagration at Peshtigo was a high wind, "the forerunner of the tempest, [which] was increasing in violence, the redness in the sky deepening, and the roaring sound like thunder seemed almost upon us" (Pernin 2). This tornado of fire created many small fire whirls and reached internal winds of up to 80 miles per hour (Pernin 3). Christianson said the "town was enveloped by a rush of air as hot as though it ...