I had been running a steamboat on Lake Chetak and Birch Lake in Sawyer
County, Wisconsin, during the summer of 1898 and had finished my work
September 25. I arrived in Rice Lake with the expectation of having a
couple of weeks’ rest before again taking up my duties as foreman of
one of Knapp, Stout, and Company’s logging camps for the winter. I had
been in town one day, about long enough to get cleaned up, when I went
down to the company’s office to draw some money. While I was in the
general office some one said: “Your father wants to see you in his
office.” I walked into his office and sat down. He had a map showing
camp locations and other data spread out on the desk before him, which
he studied for a few moments and then turned to me, saying: “John, how
soon can you get ready to go to the woods?” This, as you know, could
have but one answer, and that was, “Now!” “All right,” he said, “I am
somewhat alarmed about this long-continued dry spell and fires might
spring up at any moment, and none of the camps or dams in your
locality have any fire protection, such as back-firing and
water-barrels at hand. Therefore I wish you would pick up a few men
and whatever you might need and get up to your camp, make your
headquarters there, and look after the camps in that vicinity, namely:
Mulvaney’s, Aronson’s, Knutson’s, Max Down’s, Thompson’s, and the old
Ahern Camp on Sucker Creek.”
I swallowed the disappointment of a contemplated trip to Minneapolis
to see the only girl I ever thought very much of, whom I had not seen
for about eight months, and stepping over to the shipping clerk’s
desk, I wrote up a list of food supplies and a requisition for a team
to move the same, expecting to start the following morning. I went out
on the street to pick up some men and came across Lee Miller and Frank
Wirth, inseparable pals, who had worked for me the previous winter. I
asked them how soon they would be ready to go to the woods, and they
said, “Right now.” “All right,” said I, “pack your sacks and be here
at six in the morning, and we will load the team and go.” While we
were talking, another man came along, Julius Peterson by name, a
hunchback, who, notwithstanding his deformity, was considered one of
the best sawyers that ever felled a tree. He also was willing to start
immediately, so I went over to the hotel and wrote the only girl--who,
by the way, has been my wife for the past seventeen years--that I
would have to defer that visit for another seven or eight months. I
got my clothes packed again, and at six-thirty the following morning
we were on our way to my camp at the head of Birch Lake, a distance of
about thirty miles.
We arrived at Cedar Lake Dam for dinner and at camp about eight
o’clock the night of September 27, 1898. We opened the door of the
cook-shanty very cautiously, so as not to disturb a family of skunks
who yearly took up their abode under the floors of the camps during
the summer months. They did not approve of being disturbed, and from
past experiences we decided not to make any unnecessary noise, such as
moving tables and heavy boxes along the floors, until such time as
they might be more accustomed to our presence. We built a fire in the
stove and made some coffee, and after what we called a “store-feed,”
consisting of cheese, crackers, and sardines, we spread our blankets
upon the floor to sleep as only men of that day could. We arose about
five-thirty on the morning of the twenty-eighth, had another
store-breakfast, unloaded the wagon, and started the team back to
town. Then the great question confronted us as to who was to do the
cooking. The regular cook for the winter, Herman Gottschalk, could not
be had for at least two weeks, as he was cooking for the rafting-crews
at Reed’s Landing. Frank Wirth finally agreed to a compromise: he was
to do the cooking until such time as the first man should kick and
then said man was to cook until someone else should kick, to which we
all agreed.
Leaving Wirth at the camp to cook up a regular dinner, Miller,
Peterson, and I left for Mulvaney’s Camp to see what condition it
would be in, if we had the unexpected fire. We arrived there about ten
o’clock and opened up the blacksmith shop, got out empty barrels,
cooking utensils, and everything that would hold water, and started
Miller out to round up a couple of yokes of cattle. He returned in an
hour or so with about ten head. We selected two yokes out of the bunch
and, hooking them up to a breaking-plow, plowed about a dozen furrows
around the camp, after which we turned them loose. They immediately
started off in a westernly direction, which you may call animal
instinct if you will, for we afterward found that to be the only
possible direction they could have taken and evaded the fire, which
unbeknown to us was so soon to follow. We sat down and smoked our
pipes and joked about the unnecessary precaution of filling the
barrels, as at that time it was one of the prettiest autumn days I
have ever seen, not a cloud in the sky, not a breeze stirring, no sign
of smoke anywhere, and no possible chance, apparently, of there ever
being a fire. Nevertheless, we were carrying out instructions and we
set to work to fill up the barrels, which took about an hour.
We had just filled the barrels on the roof of the long barns, when
Miller, who was on top of one of the barns, called my attention to a
cloud of smoke that had suddenly sprung up on the horizon about five
or six miles to the south and west of us. I climbed up on the roof of
the barn, where I could get a better view. The wind suddenly arose and
within ten minutes it had attained the velocity of a cyclone; what
followed happened so quickly it has never as yet been quite clear to
me. I can remember the black cloud settling down and in less time than
it takes to write this, the fire was upon us--not on the ground as you
might imagine, but in the air. The heat became terrific and the first
sign of a blaze sprang up in the top of a broken stump about twenty
feet in height and a hundred feet from the sleeping-shanty.
I jumped off the roof of the barn, grabbed up a water bucket, Peterson
doing the same, and ran for the sleeping-shanty, a distance of about
150 feet. Before we could reach it, it was afire. We threw several
buckets of water upon it, but the water might have been kerosene for
all the good it did. Seeing it was useless to try to save the
sleeping-shanty or the cook-shanty, which were only a few feet apart,
we ran back to the barns, thinking to save them. This may sound
dubious, but it all happened within twenty minutes of the time we
first saw smoke four or five miles away. As quickly as we reached the
barn I motioned to Miller to dump the barrels of water which we had
placed there; those buildings, if you remember them, were each about
sixty feet in length, standing parallel, with a hay shed between,
which contained about ten tons of baled hay left over from the
previous winter. While Miller ran to the far end of the barn,
upsetting the six or seven barrels as he ran, Peterson and I were
throwing water on the hay shed. I don’t suppose we had thrown more
than ten or twelve buckets when the roof of the barn took fire. As I
said before, the fire seemed to be in the very air, for strange as it
may seem, the dry grass and leaves around the buildings were not yet
burned. In less than a minute the roof was afire from one end to the
other. I motioned to Miller to jump off. He did so and ran towards me.
When he got near enough so that I could hear, he yelled: “What in hell
will we do now, and which way will we go?”
Then for the first time I realized the danger we were in. A glance
around showed only one way open and that was due north towards a wall
of virgin green timber, a distance of about 500 yards. The ground
between us and the edge of the timber had been logged the previous
winter, leaving treetops and brush piled up here and there in great
heaps--you know how it would look after being logged. How we got to
the edge of the timber I can hardly remember, but in the excitement I
still had the empty water-bucket in my hand. We reached the timber to
find that the fire had beaten us. Perhaps a burning brand from one of
the buildings had dropped just at the edge of the timber among the dry
leaves and had burned a strip of ground about 200 feet in width,
leaving the ground perfectly bare. Luckily for us the timber was
green, with no underbrush to hold the fire, for when we reached there,
there was nothing left on the ground but the smouldering ashes of the
leaves. We stopped to get our breath, and then it dawned upon us how
useless it was to run. I said to Miller, “If we ever get out of this,
it will be by staying right here.” He gave me one look, which I shall
never forget, as much as to say, “Man, you are crazy,” and again
started to run, Peterson following. I then turned and looked back
whence we had come. There was a solid wall of fire similar to a great
wave, extending as far to each side as one could see and mounting
fifty feet in height. It is hard to express just what my feelings
were, but I remember that I ceased to be afraid, knowing that our time
had come, there being not a possible chance to come out alive. The
main body of the fire by that time had reached a point about where the
camps had stood. I was almost tempted to start to run, when I turned
to find Miller and Peterson again at my side. They had run only a
short distance into the tail end of the advance fire and had come
back. I remember Miller lying on his face on the ground with his head
stuck into a hole that he had dug out with his hands. The ground at
the roots of the trees was damp, and the only way we could breathe was
by lying on the ground, for when we stood up the heat and smoke were
so thick we could not breathe.
It is interesting to hear people relate their experiences and close
encounters with death. After hearing them, I can judge just how close
they really have been to real death. For as I see it, it has four
stages--first, the excitement; then fear; then resolution; then death
itself. At about this time we had reached the point of resolve; Miller
and Peterson were on their knees praying, while as for myself,
nothwithstanding I have lived a somewhat better life since, I
concluded that as I had never asked God for anything prior to that, it
was a very poor time to start in now that I was about to die. So I
concluded to go just as I was, believing, as I still do, that a
death-bed confession would avail me nothing. You can best realize our
position when I tell you that we were never over four feet apart for
at least four hours and during that period there was not one word
exchanged among us. At the end of that time I was standing leaning up
against a tree. Other trees were falling all around us, and as I stood
there wishing one might fall on me and end it all, it started to rain.
It must have poured, for before I realized what had happened I was wet
to the skin. That brought me back to my senses and I realized that I
was alive and that I still wanted to live. I ran a short distance and
it came to me like a flash that I was going the wrong way to get out.
I turned and ran back, and as I ran, stumbled over Peterson, who was
still on his knees. The first word to break the dull silence of those
hours was spoken then, when he said, “What in hell are you trying to
do?” We made our way out to the old tote road, and after walking about
a mile west, got out of the range of the fire.
We made our way back to camp to find Wirth all excited. His greeting
was, “Gee, you ought to have been here this afternoon, for everything
at the dam”--meaning Birch Lake dam--“has burned, camps and all, for
I could see the hay stacks as they would catch fire and the flames
shoot up in the air hundreds of feet.” Then the thought flashed upon
me: The dam, suppose it should burn out. With an eleven-foot head of
water on Birch Lake and Big Chetak, what would happen to the country
below? Miller and Peterson being all in, I asked Wirth if he would go
with me and try to make the dam. The rain had lasted only about half
an hour and the fire, which had again got under way, but with no wind,
was fortunately not burning as furiously as earlier in the day. The
road to the dam took us back into the edge of the fire, but on making
several detours we reached the dam to find both wings afire. Pete
Null, and four or five men who had been stationed there at the Birch
Lake Camp, were making a desperate fight to save the dam, but they
were almost played out, having fought in vain all afternoon to save
the camps.
One glance and I saw what to do. Wirth and I picked up a couple of
peavies, and climbing down to the apron, ripped up four or five planks
and stuck them on end down under the bed plates, or stringers, leaving
them standing pointing up stream at an angle of forty-five degrees. We
then climbed back upon the dam and raised the gate four or five
inches. When the current struck those planks it threw a spray of water
all over both wings of the dam and inside of ten minutes we had the
fire completely out.
[Illustration: MAP PREPARED BY MR. BRACKLIN TO ILLUSTRATE HIS
NARRATIVE]
We all sat down and rested for about half an hour; then Wirth and I
took a boat and rowed back to camp, a distance of about two miles.
When we reached there, about midnight, the rain set in and it rained
until noon the following day. Miller and Peterson were still unable to
move around much, as their faces and hands were badly blistered and
their eyes pained them terribly. As for myself, aside from being
unable to speak above a whisper, I was in pretty good shape, and
knowing it would only be a couple of days until father, as soon as he
could reach us, would be there to look the situation over--plans for
the coming winter of logging would have to be changed to include all
the timber that had been burned, for in that country a tree though
slightly burned would be worm-eaten inside of a year unless cut--I
started out with Wirth the next morning to find, if we could, just how
far the fire had extended east and west and to look up a site for a
camp to replace the Mulvaney Camp which had burned. We found that the
fire had taken a course similar to that of a cyclone, about three
miles in width and about twenty miles in length, extending from a
point four miles south and west of Cedar Lake Dam, crossing the
narrows between Cedar Lake and Hemlock up the east shore of Cedar Lake
to a point about opposite Stout’s Island, and then north to the shores
of Big Chetak just west of the Aronson Camp in Section 4--in all an
area of about seventeen miles in length and two to four miles in
width.
Father and L. S. Tainter arrived the next day and after looking over
the site for the new camp we came back to the scene of our experience
of a few days before. We had about reached the point when father
turned to me saying, “John, did I understand you to say you were here
during this fire?” I answered “Yes.” He looked at me for a moment
with, you will remember, that peculiar squint of his and then he said,
“John, you lie, for no man could have been here when this fire passed
and lived to tell the tale.” Nevertheless we were there, and are still
living.
[1] The author of this narrative is a native of Rice Lake,
Wisconsin. His father, James Bracklin, was for over thirty
years superintendent of logging and log-driving for the
Knapp, Stout, and Company lumbering corporation. Under his
tutelage the son received his training for his life-calling
of woodsman and lumberman. The present narrative was
prepared in the form of a letter to Mr. Henry E. Knapp of
Menomonie, to whom we are indebted for the opportunity to
put it into print.