The Chicago Fire: America at Its Best | 5 Minute Video

The most famous fire in American history happened in Chicago on October 8, 1871. But it’s not the fire that was so remarkable; it’s what happened afterwards. Lee Habeeb, host of the nationally syndicated radio show “Our American Stories,” explains.

Donate today to PragerU!

To view the script, sources, quiz, and study guides, visit

VISIT PragerU!

Get PragerU bonus content for free!

Join Prager United to get new swag every quarter, exclusive early access to our videos, and an annual TownHall phone call with Dennis Prager!

Join PragerU's text list to have these videos, free merchandise giveaways and breaking announcements sent directly to your phone!

Do you shop on Amazon? Click and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Same great products. Same low price. Shopping made meaningful.

FOLLOW us!

PragerU is on Snapchat!

JOIN PragerFORCE!

For Students

JOIN our Educators Network!

Script:

The most famous fire in American history happened in Chicago on October 8, 1871. But it’s not the fire that is so remarkable. It’s what happened afterwards. To understand why, we first need to know something about the city’s history.

In 1840, Chicago was a small town of forty-five hundred souls. It ranked 92nd in population in the United States. Yet, only three decades later, by 1870—just a year before the great fire—Chicago was closing in on a population of 300,000, making it the fifth-biggest city in America and the fastest-growing city in the world.

What led to all this rapid growth? In three words: location, location, location.

“Chicago was near the center of the country, and near where the waterways and railways met,” city historian Tim Samuelson notes. “It was a perfect place for anything and anyone to get anywhere…”

Timing had a lot to do with it, too. America was moving from a rural to an industrial power. Chicago was right in the middle of the action. Ironically, its rapid growth was almost its undoing. “[Chicago] had to build, and build quickly, and so they built it out of wood,” explained Sarah Marcus of the Chicago History Museum. “It was quick, it was easy, and it was cheap.”

And, as it turned out, very flammable.

By most accounts, the fire started on the city’s West Side, near the De Koven Street barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary. No one is sure of the cause, but it could have been anything, from vandals to a drunken neighbor to that clumsy cow of urban legend.

Within minutes, the blaze roared out of control, tearing through Chicago’s business district. The fire was so hot, it created its own tornado of flame. By 3:30 a.m., all hope of saving large parts of the city was gone. Nearly 30 hours later, the fire finally died. The reason? There was nothing left to burn.

The losses were staggering: The fire claimed nearly 300 lives, destroyed over 17,000 buildings covering almost 3.5 square miles, and caused damage of over $200 million–about 3.8 billion today. Roughly a third of the city lay in ruins, and one out every three people living in Chicago—nearly 100,000 residents—became homeless overnight.

“All the law offices were destroyed, all the major hotels were destroyed, all the major department stores were destroyed, and all the major banks were destroyed,” Chicago weather historian Tom Skilling notes.

In those days, there were no national or state agencies to help. Chicago was on its own.

What was to be done? To most of Chicago’s citizens, the answer was obvious: Rebuild. Make the city better than ever. Yes, there were many victims of the fire, but there was no sense of victimhood. Even before the bricks stopped smoking, the people of Chicago went to work.

First, the damage had to be assessed. The death and destruction were obvious. But there were some major pluses as well. The stockyards and meat packing plants had been spared. Two-thirds of the grain elevators survived. And most importantly, the railway and rail stock escaped major damage. This was critical because it would allow shipments of building materials and private relief aid to come pouring in from across the country and around the world.

To view the complete script, visit