Ohio Valley History: The Great Clifton Fire of 1893
Rizer
Imagine this. April 7th, 1893. It’s Friday night, you’ve just sat down for dinner, and suddenly you hear the salt furnace’s steam whistle begin to shriek. The normal work day is over, so it can’t be anything other than an alarm of some kind. You rush outside to find the cause of the commotion, and that’s when you realize that everything you know is about to go up in flames…
Burning soot from a pumping battery had fallen on an old shed at the Clifton Salt Works, the old Bedford Furnace, a tinderbox waiting only for a spark. Before Clifton could even get organized, the entire furnace was in flames and growing by the minute under a strong wind. Block by block, homes and stores caught fire, and the bucket brigades, as admirable as their efforts were, might as well have been shooting spitballs. To the townspeople of Clifton, their situation seemed hopeless.
Ohio Valley History: The Great Clifton Fire of 1893
Rizer
Imagine this. April 7th, 1893. It’s Friday night, you’ve just sat down for dinner, and suddenly you hear the salt furnace’s steam whistle begin to shriek. The normal work day is over, so it can’t be anything other than an alarm of some kind. You rush outside to find the cause of the commotion, and that’s when you realize that everything you know is about to go up in flames…
Burning soot from a pumping battery had fallen on an old shed at the Clifton Salt Works, the old Bedford Furnace, a tinderbox waiting only for a spark. Before Clifton could even get organized, the entire furnace was in flames and growing by the minute under a strong wind. Block by block, homes and stores caught fire, and the bucket brigades, as admirable as their efforts were, might as well have been shooting spitballs. To the townspeople of Clifton, their situation seemed hopeless.