A Frontier Home Consumed in Minutes
A fierce blaze leaves a Hanford ranching family with little more than their jewelry and a piano.
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.
The handsome home on the Manley B. Haynes ranch, just out of Hanford, was completely destroyed by fire about noon Thursday. The members of the family were all at the packing shed at the time the fire started, and its origin is unknown, although it is thought that a spark or a live coal from a bucket of ashes emptied shortly before by Mrs. Haynes may have blown onto the sleeping porch. Although the fire was discovered almost immediately, so fierce were the flames and so quickly was the house consumed that the four men who were there and Mrs. Haynes were able to save only the piano, victrola, the books, a rug or two, some pictures and a small box of jewelry belonging to Mrs. Haynes. All their personal effects and clothing and all the other furnishings of the house, which were elegant, and among which was a drawer of solid silverware, were destroyed. The house cost in the neighborhood of $3500 and was insured for about half its value. Mrs. Haynes left Friday for Seattle, where she will do some necessary shopping. It is Mr. Haynes’ intention to rebuild as soon as the insurance is adjusted.
“So fierce were the flames and so quickly was the house consumed that the four men who were there and Mrs. Haynes were able to save only the piano, victrola, the books, a rug or two.”
The entire town of Hanford, including the Haynes ranch, was later swallowed by the Manhattan Project, making the memory of this house a literal ghost of a vanished community. The fire is a reminder of the extreme vulnerability of wooden-frame homesteads in the high-desert winds of the Columbia Basin.
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