Personal Experiences During the Chicago Fire, 1871

Frank J. Loesch was twenty-three years old, a bookkeeper at the Western Union's main office, when the hottest summer in Chicago's memory gave way to October and the fire that would erase his city. He lived at 110 North Dearborn Street, one door south of Ohio Street. He would be homeless by the morning of October 10th, 1871. This is his minute-by-minute account of the three days that destroyed two thousand acres, killed over two hundred people, and left a hundred thousand others wandering through the ashes of their lives. Loesch writes not as a historian but as a survivor, watching the flames leap from the West Side across the river and consume everything he knew. He describes the heat so intense it cracked streetcar windows, the crowds fleeing with whatever they could carry, the impossible choice between staying and going. His account captures the specific horror of a city built almost entirely of wood burning itself to the ground. Written decades later but reconstructed from contemporary letters and memories, this is one of the most intimate portraits we have of an American catastrophe and the young man who lived through it.