Oct. 10: The Great Chicago Fire was extinguished on this day in 1871
Late one night, when we were all in bed,
Mrs. O'Leary lit a lantern in the shed.
Her cow kicked it over, then winked her eye and said,
"There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!"
There really was a Catherine O'Leary, her home really was Ground Zero for the fire, and she really did have a cow. But no one knows how the Great Chicago Fire started on Sunday, Oct. 8, 1871 -- though it's possible that Mrs. O'Leary's cow really did kick over a lantern. Whatever the cause, the fire was devastating. It raged throughout Monday and into Tuesday before finally being put out.
The calamity left homeless a mind-boggling one-third of Chicago (pop. 324,000), laid waste to its business district (17,000 buildings destroyed), and killed 300 people. Yet reconstruction gave Chicago a tremendous boost it might never have gotten otherwise, and in less than a decade, the population was 500,000.
A handful of structures were spared and are still standing, including St. Michael's Church in Old Town and the Chicago Water Tower and Chicago Avenue Pumping Station.
