1921 Duluth & St Louis County MN, Van Brunt.pdf - Garon.us

590 • DULUTH
AND ST. LOUIS COUNTY
imagine mining villages of the ]\Iesabi range must be. But the period,
fortunateh', was soon over, and the civic dress and social standard
of \'irginia of today are as well ordered as an eastern city of
very much longer establishment might expect to prevail.
Fire Department Organized.—Albert E. Bickford was one of the
men who saw Virginia through her "pioneer stage of crudity," and
helped it through, if one may judge from the fact that he has been
city clerk for twenty-two years. He was not long in recognizing
that the greatest danger was of fire, there being such a stand of resinous
timber around the little village. He organized a volunteer fire
company on March 10, 1893. C. W. Alusser, in his "Virginia in the
Great State of Minnesota," writes, regarding it
* * * in March, 1893, * * * nearly everj^ able-bodied man in town
assembled in the rear of William Hayes' saloon, and org-anized Virginia's first
fire-fighting squad.
The first chief was E. W. Coons ; the first secretary, P. J. Ryan ;
and the company was no doubt of service in the following June, though
they could not save the village. The Virginia Fire Department Relief
Association was organized in May, 1895, and is a strong fraternal
and financial body.
The First Fire.—The first check \*irginia was destined to experience
was in June, 1893, when it was "swept ofif the map," or at
most had no more visible property above the surface than the twisted
and half-molten remains of what hardware their residences, now
ashes, once contained. The "Virginian," industrial edition, of August
30, 1907, reports the catastrophe as follows
By June 1, 1893, Virginia had become the most important town on the
range. There were over fifteen developed mines in the vicinity of the village,
and the town had a population of almost 5,000 people. But in the midst of
the season of growth and prosperity came a blow which was a severe check
upon the development of the town. On Sunday, June 18, 1893, a terrible bush
fire was raging southwest of the village. It was a very hot day. Everything
was dry and parched as it possibly could be. A strong southwest wind had
begun to blow, and this drove the flames directly towards the town, and forty
minutes after the first shanty in the outskirts of the village had begun to
burn there was nothing left of Virginia, the metropolis of the range. No doubt
this catastrophe discouraged our early citizens and many of the faint-hearted
left the town never to return, but there were others who had the bravery, the
pioneer strength, hope and spirit, that caused a larger and more beautiful Virginia
to rise from the ashes of the old.
It was a disaster, a catastrophe, but not a holocaust, as that word
is generally understood ; it was not a calamity like that which came
to Hinckley in the same year, or like that which swept property and
life from many parts of Northern ^Minnesota in 1918. Property was
gone, but Virginians still lived, and it was only a question of time before
she would recover. As a matter of fact, the recovery was quick,
notwithstanding the hard times of that year. And times certainly
were hard.
Depression of 1893.—The depression experienced in \'irginia in
1893 was, by the way, not in the slightest degree caused by the forest
fire, though such incinerating of their possessions made the hard
times harder to bear. But the money stringency was a national, indeed
a world-wide, condition. The full force of it was felt about
mid-summer, when the state of things, financial, in Dulutli was tragic.
On the range, there was even less money. Clearing House certificates
were in places the only currency. In Virginia, instancing one case
only, things miust have been desperate. The Lerch brothers had come
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