Fire Strikes the Ballard Waterfront
A spectacular blaze at the Stimson Mill Company's dry houses threatens the entire Ballard lumber complex before firefighters bring it under control.
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.
About 2:30 yesterday afternoon the dry house belonging to the Stimson Mill Company at Ballard caught fire, and, as a high wind was blowing, it was for a time feared a serious conflagration might result. The building consisted of five dry houses, containing 2,000,000 cedar shingles and several thousand feet of choice fir lumber. Four of the kilns or houses with their contents were totally destroyed, making the loss about $9,500. If the fire had not been confined to the inflammable material in the dry houses, the shingle and saw mills and a large stock of lumber, valued at $250,000, in the immediate vicinity, would have been in imminent danger of destruction. The Stimson's private system for fire protection is one of the most perfect in the state, and their men had complete control of it, so that inside of a minute seven large streams of salt water were pouring upon the burning buildings.
“Dense clouds of smoke rolled up over the town, and the occupants of dwellings near the mills moved their furniture to places of safety.”
Ballard was a fierce, independent mill town before its annexation by Seattle, and its history was written largely in sawdust and smoke. The fire described here highlights the extreme danger industrial hubs faced when lumber and dry kilns dominated the waterfront.
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