1866 Great Fire of Portland, Maine
- 1866 Great Fire of Portland, Maine
The Great Fire of Portland, Maine occurred on the first Independence Day after the end of the American Civil War on July 4, 1866. Five years before the Great Chicago Fire, this was the greatest fire yet seen in an American city. It started in a boat house on Commercial Street, likely caused by a firecracker or a cigar ash. The fire spread to a lumber yard and on to a sugar house, then spread across the city, eventually burning out on Munjoy Hill in the city's east end. Only two people died in the fire, but 1,800 buildings were burned to the ground making almost 10,000 people homeless. Soon after the fire, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow described his old home town: "Desolation! Desolation! Desolation! It reminds me of Pompeii, the 'sepult city'."
References
* [http://history.rays-place.com/me/portland-me.htm History of Portland, Maine (1886)]
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