The Great 'Old Dominion' Dynamite Fire
When an iconic hotel caught fire in a Washington town, desperate residents turned to explosives to save the rest of the block from total destruction.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Colville, Feb. 15 — Last evening at 7:30 o'clock the Old Dominion hotel on the corner of Main and J streets was discovered to be on fire, and in less than an hour the entire building was in ruins. Lack of water and the intense heat from the building, which was a frame structure, forced the citizens who had turned out en masse to fight the fire to extreme measures toward the safety of the city. Dynamite was freely used in blowing up the adjoining buildings, which checked the spread of the fire and saved thousands of dollars in property from irreparable loss. The hotel had been built in the fall of 1883 at a cost of $5,000. County Treasurer Dickey lost about $1,300 by the destruction of his store building alongside of the hotel, which was blown up to create a firebreak.
“Lack of water and the intense heat from the building... forced the citizens who had turned out en masse to fight the fire to extreme measures... dynamite was freely used.”
While modern firefighting relies on high-pressure hydrants and fire-resistant materials, the 1892 desperation to 'blow up buildings' to stop a blaze highlights the historical fragility of frontier boomtowns. Today, concerns about fire in dense, older neighborhoods remain a recurring challenge in Pacific Northwest urban planning.
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