Major Store and Rail Office Destroyed by Fire at Kamilchie
A blaze in a frame building swept away a general store and the local railroad company office, resulting in a significant financial loss.
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.
On Saturday last about noon, the general merchandise store of Walter McBryde at Kamilchie was destroyed by fire. Attached to the building was the office of the Puget Sound and Gray’s Harbor railroad company, which was also destroyed. The entire stock was burned, and nothing of value was saved, as the light frame building was a mass of flames in short order. The telephone was removed, so communication with other parts was not obstructed. The train came down during the fire and passed quite close to the burning building. The loss is about $4500, with $8900 of insurance to offset. Mr. McBryde was intending shortly to remove to the new store at the point at the new Kamilchie.
“The light frame building was a mass of flames in short order.”
Fires in light-frame wood structures were the perennial disaster of the Pacific Northwest frontier. This event captures the vulnerability of the essential nodes of trade—the general store and the rail office—which were often the only anchors of a nascent town like Kamilchie.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.