Narrow Escape from Fire in Sultan
A tipped lantern sparks a fire in an upper room, nearly consuming the town's business district.
A fire broke out in the upper portion of C. A. Lewis’s shop at this place, Tuesday morning at 2 o’clock, caused by an overturned lantern. After a severe fight it was extinguished, but had it gained the hallway, in the absence of fire apparatus, it would have swept the business portion of Sultan out of existence.
“It would have swept the business portion of Sultan out of existence.”
Then · 1892134 years apartNow · 2026
Sultan, Washington, remains a community defined by its connection to the timber and railway industries. This near-catastrophe serves as a reminder of how fire was the single greatest existential threat to the small boomtowns of the Washington frontier.
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