The Night Colfax Burned
A Chinese cook's kerosene mishap destroys the heart of a small Washington town, exposing the dangers of inadequate civic infrastructure.
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.
At 4 o'clock this morning fire broke out in the Baldwin hotel in Colfax, and in two hours all the frame buildings in the block, together with the Colfax opera house, Mitchell, Lewis & Staver Company's warehouse, and the Lansdale building were burned down. Binnard's granite block was damaged to the tune of $12,000. The total loss is $107,000. The fire was caused by a Chinese cook lighting the fire in the Baldwin hotel with kerosene. The flames would have been confined to a small area but for the fact that no water could be had, as the reservoir is not complete and the pumps at the pumping station are out of order. It was an hour before water came, and it arrived just in time to save the remainder of the business portion of the town, which was threatened with destruction. As it was, two blocks in the business center of the town were reduced to red-hot coals.
“The flames would have been confined to a small area but for the fact that no water could be had, as the reservoir is not complete and the pumps at the pumping station are out of order.”
Fire was the greatest threat to early Washington state towns, where rapid growth often outpaced the installation of basic utilities like water mains and pumping stations. This tragedy in Colfax serves as a stark reminder of how municipal neglect could turn a routine household accident into a total economic catastrophe for a community.
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