A Morning Fire Takes City Hall and a Block of Colfax
A $16,500 blaze burned out the city hall, a livery stable, saloons, a restaurant, a lodging house and the telephone office.
Sixteen thousand five hundred dollars' worth of property was destroyed by fire in Colfax early yesterday morning. The following firms were burned out: Livingston & Kull, city hall; Thomas Baker, livery stable; F. J. Burns, saloon; Lucy Palanda, restaurant; Dunlap Barr, hay, feed, etc.; J. Lucy, lodging house; Fraternity block, windows; Inland Telephone Company; C. H. Dodd & Co.; Sid Benton, saloon; Collins house.
“Sixteen thousand five hundred dollars worth of property was destroyed by fire in Colfax early yesterday morning.”
Colfax rebuilt, and downtown fire codes and brick construction became standard responses to exactly this kind of loss. The list of burned businesses shows how a single morning could erase a town’s civic core—a fragility that modern fire districts exist to prevent.
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