The Great Fire of Eighteen Ninety-Eight
Near Park City, Utah
On June nineteenth, eighteen ninety-eight, a fire started somewhere in the commercial heart of Park City. By the time it was brought under control, a large part of the town had been destroyed, including most of the structures lining Main Street. The damage was enormous for eighteen ninety-eight, and the fire left the center of a wealthy mining city in ashes.
The Park City fire has been called the greatest fire in the history of Utah. The town rebuilt rapidly, using insurance money and the mining income that still flowed through the community. The reconstruction produced a Main Street of brick buildings, more fire-resistant than the wooden structures they replaced, and of a consistent Victorian commercial style that reflected the prosperity of the period. Most of the buildings visible on Park City's historic Main Street today are products of that post-fire reconstruction of the late eighteen nineties.
Among the lots that the fire cleared was a site near the bottom of Main Street that was subsequently developed by two local businessmen, who built a theater they called the Dewey Theatre. That theater became the foundation on which the Egyptian Theatre would later be built. The great fire that destroyed old Park City also cleared the ground for some of the cultural institutions that defined the new one. Main Street today is a Victorian streetscape born from a catastrophe, which is a history it shares with a surprising number of American downtowns.
