Moose Lake and the Great Fire of 1918

Moose Lake incorporated in eighteen eighty-nine as a quiet Carlton County railroad town. On October twelfth, nineteen eighteen, it became the epicenter of the worst natural disaster in Minnesota history. A host of wildfires, dry-conditions and fall winds merging them into one catastrophe, swept through thirty-eight communities across hundreds of square miles in under fifteen hours.

The area around Moose Lake suffered the greatest loss of life. More than two hundred people died within ten miles of town, and forty-five of the dead could not be identified. They were placed in a mass grave on the edge of the city.

The final toll across the broader fire region exceeded four hundred fifty killed, making it one of the deadliest wildfires in recorded United States history, behind the Peshtigo fire of eighteen seventy-one. Moose Lake rebuilt. The mass grave and the fire's memorial remain in town today.