The Night Peshtigo Died

Jim Chizek, in his novel, depicts the struggles of the people of Peshtigo, based on actual happenings before, during, and after the disastrous Peshtigo Fire of October 8, 1871.

As East Coast timber was depleted, a demographic shift to the huge pinery along the Great Lakes began. With New England Yankees and new European immigrants finding able work in logging, came disastrous forest fires taking not only forests but also many new logging communities, sometimes with human casualties. With the depletion of the forests also came the extinction of many species of wildlife, including the passenger pigeon and the monk parakeet.

On October 8, 1871, occurred the worst forest fire in American history. Never has there been so much human suffering and loss of life as with the Peshtigo Fire. Because the Peshtigo Fire happened on the same day as the disastrous Chicago Fire, the little-known wilderness area received very little of the infamous notoriety of the fire in Illinois. The Peshtigo Fire was a firestorm with tornadoes of fire that far surpassed that of the Chicago Fire in deaths and suffering of this community. It consumed approximately 1,200,000 acres, with the culmination of deaths far exceeding most estimates of 1,500-2,500, along with twenty-three scattered villages of Menominee, Pottawatomie, Stockbridge, and Chippewa that were burned in the wilderness area.

The story is of a typical family's dream of the time attempting to eke out a living in a wilderness area by utilizing the natural resources that they believed were so enormous they could never be depleted.

Suffering after the fire was much greater due to the seriousness of burns and depravity, followed by those who suffered financial losses and loss of family and friends. The fire left very few survivors to identify the remaining, as the countless homeless were to face the fast-approaching cold Midwest winter. Survivors of the fire and their kin have honored the suffering of that terrible day with many memorials, consecrating the ground where they perished.

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