Hinckley: Born of Lumber, Consumed by Fire

Hinckley was founded in eighteen eighty-five in the middle of Minnesota's white-pine belt, midway between Duluth and the Twin Cities. Two railroads crossed here and twenty-two trains a day passed through, making it the hub of the lumbering industry with fifteen hundred residents, an opera house, and a new brick schoolhouse. Then came September first, eighteen ninety-four.

Two months of drought and thousands of acres of slash left by logging crews created a tinderbox. In the space of four hours a firestorm swept through, killing four hundred eighteen people and burning more than three hundred square miles. Some survivors climbed into wells; a locomotive engineer named James Root drove his train backward through the wall of flame to safety.

Residents chose to rebuild, and Hinckley rose again, though the white-pine forests that made it never would.