A Frontier Town Wiped Out by Fire
A supply hub in Stevens County is reduced to ash after a midnight blaze in a general store.
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.
News received here this evening reports that the little town of Meyers Falls, on the Spokane & Northern railroad, was wiped out by fire early yesterday morning. The town contains about fifty inhabitants. The two principal stores were owned by Mr. Meyers, the postmaster and founder of the town, and a Mr. Blackmore, grocer and dealer in general merchandise. The post office was located in Meyers' store. The remainder of the town consists of a sawmill, depot and several dwelling houses. It is principally a supply point for farmers. It is not known how the blaze started, but it is supposed to have been from a stove in one of the wooden store buildings. The store was all in flames before the fire was discovered, and the wind carried the flames to a neighboring building. Both were totally destroyed, only a few goods being saved from Mr. Blackmore's building. The post office went up in smoke; nothing was saved from it, all the pouched mails and several registered letters being burned.
“The store was all in flames before the fire was discovered, and the wind carried the flames to a neighboring building.”
Small resource-based towns in Washington often existed at the whim of fire and rail connections; when the infrastructure burned, the town often vanished with it. Today, Meyers Falls is essentially a ghost town, a relic of the era when Washington's geography was defined by isolated supply stops.
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