The Cudahy Packing Plant Fire
A catastrophic fire destroys a waterfront warehouse, turning tons of meat into a 'seething mass of flames.'
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 Cudahy Packing Company's warehouses, offices, and smokehouses on the water front at the foot of Pine street caught fire yesterday morning at 1:30 o'clock, and buildings and contents were totally destroyed. There were seventy tons of lard in the warehouses, besides butter, canned meats, etc., while in the smokehouses were large quantities of hams; in one of the houses alone were 35,000 pounds of bacon backs. The oil and grease burned fiercely, and for a time the adjoining warehouses of other concerns were threatened with destruction. The burning lard ran down through the floor of the warehouses into the water and floated away, a seething mass of flames. Yesterday afternoon several beachcombers reaped a harvest from the floating lard which had drifted out into the bay.
“The burning lard ran down through the floor of the warehouses into the water and floated away, a seething mass of flames.”
This massive industrial fire at the waterfront highlights the volatility of Seattle's early mercantile districts, where packing houses and rail lines sat precariously on wooden pilings. The subsequent 'harvesting' of lard by beachcombers is a vivid example of the resourcefulness—and desperation—of the city's 19th-century working class.
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