People said the Peshtigo River was the only haven from the fire, and one 13 year-old German immigrant girl said she held onto the horn of a cow all night in the river to survive. When he found out it wasn't her, he went crazy. There's the story of a man carrying a woman to safety he thought was his wife. The fire produced countless stories of heroics and tragedy, which are collected at the research center, as well as the Peshtigo Fire Museum in downtown Peshtigo. 'Some people thought it was the end of the world.' 'What most researchers find so fascinating is the effect it (the Peshtigo Fire) had on people's lives.

The fire also burned 16 other towns, but the damage in Peshtigo was the worst.

The damage estimate was at $169 million, about the same as for the Chicago Fire. It scorched 1.2 to 1.5 million acres, although it skipped over the waters of Green Bay to burn parts of Door and Kewaunee counties. The sudden, convulsive speed of the flames consumed available oxygen. Some survivors said it moved so fast it was 'like a tornado.' It had been an unusually dry summer, and the fire moved fast. The story of the Peshtigo Fire, gleaned from survivor accounts and conjecture, is that railroad workers clearing land for tracks that Sunday evening started a brush fire which, somehow, became an inferno. The Area Research Center, the state historical society's depository for records for 11 counties in Northeast Wisconsin, has papers and manuscripts of all kinds, she said. While Chicago's story may be more colorful, researchers still find the Peshtigo Fire worth studying, Anderson said. 'And, Chicago was and still is a bigger city.' O'Leary's cow tipping over the lantern,' said Debra Anderson, an archivist for the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Area Research Center, referring to the way the Chicago fire allegedly started. 'Part of it is that myth of the cow - Mrs. The anniversary of the Peshtigo Fire usually receives little note outside the region because another horrific fire the same night - the great Chicago Fire - still seems to hog the headlines. On October 8, 1871, the most devastating forest fire in American history swept through northeast Wisconsin, claiming 1200+ lives. Reprinted with permission from the Press-Gazette

The Bigger They Are by Kim Alan