In One Ear: Lesson not learned

Published 6:00 am Thursday, July 3, 2025

The Daily Astorian of July 3, 1883, chronicles a calamitous fire from the previous day that burnt down a large section of the town’s waterfront businesses from current-day 14th to 17th Streets, which were on pilings.  

July 2 was a warm, dry, windy day and a drought was ongoing. At 6 p.m., a fire alarm sounded as a black plume of smoke and a “column of fire” consumed the engine room in the Clatsop Mill (at the current intersection of 13th and Exchange streets). Fire quickly spread to the lumber piles in the store house.  

The fire department arrived promptly, but the wind set the houses across the street ablaze. A nearby large barn full of coal oil was a threat, and hundreds of cases of oil were carried out. Many were tossed into the river.  

Everything on the roadway between the O’Brien’s Hotel and the mill could not be saved from the “solid mass of flame,” partially because there was not enough hose. There was nothing left to do for citizens whose homes and businesses were in the path of the blaze but grab their money and valuables and rush up the hill.  

The biggest problem, aside from the fire itself, was looting, especially liquor, by “brutes of human shape.” The fire peaked at 7:30 p.m., and was under control by 1 a.m., with no loss of life or limb. The damages amounted to about $7.9 million in today’s value.

“Where yesterday all was bustle and industry lies a mass of smoldering ruins,” the newspaper noted. “… The wonder is it didn’t occur before … Let us see that it does not happen again.” And yet it did, in 1922. (Image: Harper’s Weekly)