Then and Now: The 1883 fire of Spokane

Charlie Carson, born in 1848 in Frankfurt, Germany, was orphaned at the age of 3 and came to America with a friend at age 9. He grew up in New York City and learned the trade of a miller.

Carson milled grain in Portland and Ainsworth, Washington, in what is now Pasco. He moved to Spokane in 1880 and opened a restaurant on Main (then on Front and Howard). He worked alone in his tiny restaurant, feeding the men who stayed across the street at the California House Hotel. Although he was waiter, cook and dishwasher, Carson would go behind the kitchen screen and shout the orders as if a staff waited to receive them.

But at 10:30 p.m. on a cold January night in 1883, a chimney fire started in F.R. Moore’s dry goods store next door and created an inferno. The blaze claimed five wood-frame buildings and damaged two more, though volunteers “worked nobly in the absence of a fire company” until 2 a.m., said one newspaper. Carson lost his restaurant, valued at $890, and had no insurance.

Among the casualties were the town’s post office, a druggist, a furniture store and a candy store. A newspaper wrote that there was no wind and “the roofs of the surrounding buildings were covered with snow, else the whole town would have been burned to the ground.” Carson moved on to a building he purchased just days before the fire, and was one of the most profitable restaurateurs of the era, making up to $100 a day, usually working by himself and operating near railroad depots.

As the smoke cleared, the townspeople began to organize a fire department staffed with volunteers. Ladders and hose carts were purchased and stationed. Spokane’s volunteers were no match for the fire that started on a hot, windy August evening in 1889 and destroyed 32 square blocks. That fire was the catalyst for a new era of professional fire service.