THE GREAT ST. LOUIS FIRE OF 1849


In the spring of 1849, St. Louis, Missouri had a population of 45,000 souls, the western boundary of the city extending only to Eleventh Street, about three-fourths of a mile in width, by a river front of three miles. St. Louis was the prominent point in the "Far West."

The year opened with promise of great prosperity, not only in a commercial point of view, but with certainty of a large increase in population. Everything was fine until the first week of February, when the Asiatic Cholera broke out with great virulence and the deaths amounted to nearly 300 a week.  The deaths were so numerous that the stock of hearses and carriages in the city was entirely inadequate to the demand, and wagons, furniture cars, even drays and carts were extensively used in transporting the dead to the cemeteries. 

One would think that the advent of fire and water would act as an extinction of the plague, but not so; the weather was unusually warm, and by the third week of June the cholera claimed a minimum of 930 lives and did not ease its ravages until the following October when it came to an end to the immense relief of the scant population remaining.  

On the night of the 17th of May at nine o'clock, an alarm of fire was sounded, the cause of which proved to be the burning of the steamer "The White Cloud" then lying at the foot of Cherry Street, near the northern boundary of the business portion of the city; She being the farthest boat up the stream of the large number then lying at the levee.   The Fire Department at the time consisted of nine hand engines and hose reels that promptly responded.  Guided by the brilliant light which a western steamboat invariably produces, being in reality but a tremendous pile of light pine wood and paint, and when once ignited as impossible to save as a pile of shavings under similar circumstances.  Before, however, the efforts of the fireman could be of any avail the lines of the steamer which held her to her mooring parted, and the ill fated boat swung slowly out into the stream of her mission of death and destruction.  Floating slowly down with the current, she set fire to twenty-two other steamers lying moored to the shore below her, before the White Cloud reached the foot of Locust Street, about a quarter mile below the starting point. Here the heat communicated to a commission house and the flames leaped from building to building sweeping everything on the levee for four blocks extending to Main Street westward and crossing Olive Street completely gutting three more blocks between it and Second Street as far south as Market Street and then igniting a large copper shop three squares away and burned out two more blocks there.  The fire fiend was rampant and destruction loomed up grandly on every side of the burning boats.   Flames leaping hundreds of feet in the air lit up the sky and could be seen for miles.  The hoarse shouts of the firemen vainly attempted to make on stand after another as the flames raged on enveloping everything combustible within reach. 

By daylight on May 18th the firemen, after laboring for eight hours, were completely demoralized and exhausted.  Sick at heart and desperate, the brave men stood at bay.   The entire business portion of the city seemed irretrievably doomed unless something was done.  "What can be done?", was the all absorbing question of the hour and after a hurried council was held by the officers of the different companies, powder was the agent resolved upon to stay the hand of the destroyer which seemed intent upon the entire destruction of their homes and hopes.  Six buildings were blown up in succession, the last one proving the culminating point of the conflagration, and causing the death of one of the bravest and most active firemen of St. Louis, Capt. Thomas B. Targee of Missouri No.5, who while in the act of throwing a keg of powder into Philips Music store was blown to atoms. 

Thus closed the largest and most destructive fire which this city has ever experienced.   It lasted from nine o'clock in the evening of May 17th until eight in the morning on May 18th, and involved the loss of three lives, 430 houses, twenty-three steamers, nine flatboats and barges, the Republican, Reveille and Evening Gazette printing offices, the post-office, three banking houses and property amounting to $2,750,000. This terrible blow paralyzed the city for sometime. 
  The burned district was mainly the old French portion of the city with its narrow streets and antiquated buildings; which in the space of two years was entirely reconstructed with the modern edifices which add so much to the grandeur and commercial prosperity of the same quarter today. 

The fireman, from his slumbers waking,
At once his quiet home forsaking,
Regardless of both health and life,
Rushes to the deadly strife.
While still the cry of wild despair
Is wafted on the midnight air,
Fire!  Fire!  Fire!

By Tom Lynch from Volunteer Fire Department of St. Louis. Published 1880.
And the St. Louis Fire Department Yearbook 1857-1991

Last Updated: June 09, 1999