It might have been angry Native Americans seeking revenge.
Or vagrants.
Or an arsonist.
Or a stray firework or bad electrical wiring.
Or someone seeking insurance money.
Or political rivals.
Or disgruntled members of a circus that couldn’t perform.
Or an illegal whiskey-still that exploded.
The truth is no one knows exactly how a fire began at about 11 p.m. on July 4, 1889 in or around J.S. Anthony’s grocery store on Ellensburg’s Main Street and turned the community of 4,000 residents into what one newspaper described as “The City of Ashes.”
Stoked by high winds, the blaze quickly spread throughout the town’s business district, eventually burning more than ten blocks of the city’s core area, including dozens of wooden stores and more than 200 homes.
“The city presents a sad spectacle this morning,” noted the San Francisco Examiner on July 6. “Where the long blocks of business houses stood yesterday nothing remains but ashes and smoking embers.”
According to the Examiner, which listed all of the damaged building by name, only four structures survived the inferno, including Moffit’s Hotel and the Nash, Howyan, and Smith blocks, “which were saved by being some distance from the conflagration.”
A number of media accounts noted that at the time Ellensburg only had a single, hand-pump fire engine, which proved inadequate to fight the raging blaze. The fire apparently lasted more than four hours before finally finding exhausting itself with nothing left to burn.
City officials estimated the total losses from the fire were more than $2 million, which is the equivalent to about $70.4 million is today’s money. Additionally, more than 200 families lost their homes and were left “destitute,” according to the Associated Press.
Seattle’s Post-Intelligencer’s July 6 edition offered a “blow-by-blow” account of the fire’s progress. It reported that when the blaze began some 300 Ellensburg residents were attending a Knight of Pythias Ball on the third floor of the Ashler Hotel. With the ringing of the fire alarm, all of the guests streamed out of the hotel, with many immediately joining the effort to fight the fire.
“The old fire engine was hurriedly manned, the hose strung out and a stream turned on the small blaze in Anthony’s store, on the upper business portion of Main Street,” the Seattle paper said, adding, “The stream was inadequate and another was turned on from the hydrants, only to prove the oft-made assertions that the city waterworks were useless in an emergency and could not be depended on.”
The Post-Intelligencer lauded the local community for its efforts, despite the lack of proper resources. “Nearly every available man was with the fire boys, who were manfully doing their best to save the town. Those who were not there were doing what they could to protect their own.”
While there did not appear to be any fatalities, the Post-Intelligencer said one local man, a real estate agent named A. Shelbrook, had raced into the Ashler Hotel, when it started to burn, to make sure no one had been left inside.
After finding himself cutoff from the stairs by flames, he escaped by a window and “slid down a balcony post with a quilt wrapped around him but not before he was so badly burned that he will likely be a cripple for life if he survives the injuries he received [to his face, hands, and arms].”
For several days after the fire, Ellensburg authorities ordered local law enforcement to guard the burned site to keep potential looters from attempting to rummage through the ruins. The Portland Oregonian, on July 6, listed all of the city’s destroyed businesses and their respective financial losses, which numbered more than 80.
At the time of the fire, many Ellensburg city officials were in Olympia at a constitutional convention to determine the future capital of the state of Washington. Officials had hoped to have Ellensburg designated as the new seat of state government. Upon hearing of the fire, however, they returned home to assess the extent of the damage.
One of the delegates, Ellensburg founder John A. Shoudy told the Tacoma Daily Ledger on July 7 that he would rebuild his destroyed commercial properties “on a larger scale:” His sentiments were echoed by many others who said they would begin immediately to rebuild their lost businesses and homes.
As for the fire’s cause, the first theory was presented in the Oregonian on July 6, when it interviewed J.S. Anthony, owner of the grocery store where the fire started. He said he left his store at 10:15 p.m. on July 4 and “had used no fire or light excepting the electric light.” Anthony told the newspaper he believed the fire “was started by an Indian in revenge for a white man beating his squaw.”
Over the following days, other theories were advanced for the fire’s cause. According to the Daily Ledger, some Ellensburg residents believed it had been started by “tramps or vagrants who had recently been infesting the city.”
The newspaper claimed that several “reputable” citizens had found in their yards “a red card on which had been written in ink the words, “You have no pity—we show no mercy.’” Some believe the red cards are a clue to the cause of the fire, but, sadly, none of the cards can be found today and no one has ever quite figured out what the message means.
In a 2018 interview with Seattle historian Feliks Banel, Sadie Thayer, longtime director of the Kittitas County Historical Museum, said Ellensburg was experiencing an influx of vagrants from Seattle, which had suffered its own catastrophic fire just a month earlier on June 6. That conflagration destroyed the entire central business district of the city.
“Seattle burned in June, we burned in July, and Spokane burned in August,” she told Banel in an article that appeared on the MyNorthwest.com website. “So even though we know the cause of Seattle’s fire, people look at was there some connection between three locations and the fire, you know, an arsonist.”
Others point to fact that at the constitutional convention Ellensburg was considered, along with Olympia and North Yakima, as among the front-runners to become the new state capital and wonder if the fire might have been started or instigated by a representative of a rival city.
Regardless of whether there was any truth in that story, what is true is that following the fire, Ellensburg residents devoted most of their energy to the process of rebuilding. In doing so, however, any momentum to locate the state capital in the city seemed to fade. On November 4, 1890, voters overwhelming selected Olympia, the territorial capital, as the official seat of state government.
Yet another theory regarding the cause of the fire was that it was set by someone seeking insurance money. While always a possibility, there is virtually no evidence to support the claim and, in fact, many of the city’s property owners were said to be under-insured after they lost their businesses and homes.
Sadie Thayer told Banel that she had also spoken many years ago to an Ellensburg man who was more than 100 years old, who said that as a young child he had heard that the grocery store owner, J.S. Anthony, had a whiskey still in the basement, which may have exploded and started the fire.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported shortly after the fire that “owing to the excitement and confusion it is impossible to ascertain how the fire originated, but it is presumed to have been the result of the celebration of the National holiday, as it started soon after the display of fireworks last evening.”
Over the years, others proposed their own explanations, including faulty electrical wiring in Anthony’s grocery store and—bizarrely—that it had been started by disgruntled members of a circus that had come to town and planned to perform during the July 4th holiday, but had to cancel because the Kittitas Valley’s fierce winds blew down their circus tents.
As a consolation prize for not getting the state capital, it’s widely believed that Washington legislators agreed to locate one of two teaching colleges it was establishing in Ellensburg (with the other in Cheney). In 1890, legislators approved creating the Washington State Normal School (now known as Central Washington University) in Ellensburg (it opened shortly after, on September 6, 1891).
There’s an old story that claims that legislators asked Yakima city officials whether they wanted a state college or a state fair, and they took the fair. But according to a September 17, 2017 article by Yakima Herald reporter Don Myers, the story is just an enduring myth.
According to Myers, Yakima did attempt to a land-grant agricultural college but a three-person commission selected Pullman. He said that in 1892, legislators did agree to designate Yakima as the location for the annual state fair.
Yakima hosted the official state fair until the 1930s, when it was changed to the Central Washington State Fair (which it remains today).
Meanwhile, Ellensburg’s rebuilding efforts continued in earnest for several years following the fire. New buildings of locally-made bricks literally rose from the ashes. While the city experienced a decline in population by 1900, it exceeded its previous peak of 4,000 residents just a decade later and, by 1950, had doubled in size to more than 8,500 residents.
Today, much of Ellensburg’s downtown core that was rebuilt in brick remains. In 1977, the area roughly bounded by 3rd and 6th Avenues, and Main and Ruby streets, known as the Downtown Ellensburg Historic District, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
