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The Great Chicago Fire:  A fire raged through the city of Chicago from October 8 through October 10, 1871, killing hundreds. The traditional story has it that a cow owned by the O’Leary family kicked over a lantern in its barn, starting a fire that spread to over three square miles. But was it really Mrs. O’Leary’s cow that started the fire?

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The Disappearance of Glenn Miller in World War II: Glenn Miller was a famous big band leader in the 1930s and ‘40s. During World War II, he and his big band were important ambassadors for American values, playing swing music throughout Europe and broadcasting their music over the radio throughout both Allied and Axis countries. But on December 15, 1944, Glenn Miller boarded a plane to fly from Britain across the English Channel to Paris. He was never seen again. Did his plane sink in the English Channel? Was it friendly fire? Whatever happened to the famous bandleader?

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The Lost Colony of Roanoke: The Colony of Roanoke was settled in 1587 on an island in present-day North Carolina. The colony’s governor, John White, sailed home to England for supplies. When he returned three years later—delayed by the Spanish-American War—the colony had disappeared entirely. The only evidence left behind was the word “Croatoan” carved into a wooden post. What happened to those settlers?

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The Disappearance of Amelia Earhart: Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932. On June 1, 1937, Earhart and her flight navigator Fred Noonan left Miami, Florida, on the first leg of a journey that would make her the first woman to fly around the world. On July 2, Earhart and Noonan took off from Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean and simply disappeared. Did they crash? And, if so, where?

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The Great Chicago Fire | Chicago Stories

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On October 10, 1871, the citizens of Chicago faced an unrecognizable landscape. Just 48 hours earlier, there had been a vibrant city on the rise, with ornate civic buildings, grand hotels, and cultural institutions. But after the Great Chicago Fire, there was nothing but a smoking pile of rubble nearly four miles long and a mile wide. How did a routine fire become a massive disaster? Could the city possibly recover? And how did tensions between the city’s elite and the immigrant poor lead to the wrong person being wrongfully accused of starting the blaze?

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It's 1587 and 115 English settlers have arrived on Roanoke Island to start a new life. They are not the first English explorers. There had been three earlier expeditions to the New World, but this was the first to bring English women and children to America.

The goal of these expeditions for Queen Elizabeth I and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, was to create an English capital in the New World.

The newest group to arrive included Governor John White's pregnant daughter, Eleanor White Dare. In fact, several weeks after the colonists landed on the coast, Eleanor gave birth to the first English baby born in the New World. She was named Virginia Dare.

Soon afterwards, Governor White returned to England to get more supplies. His return was delayed for three years because of a war between England and Spain.

When he was finally able to make it back in 1590, on his granddaughter's third birthday, he found the colony deserted. The word 'CROATOAN' was discovered carved into a wooden post.

But where did the colonists go?

There has been plenty of speculation about the settlers' fate in the centuries that have passed: death from disease, massacre by native peoples, orassimilation into a nearby native tribe, either as friends or slaves.

Multiple theories and a lack of conclusive evidence generated the mysterious moniker "The Lost Colony."

But a new book by Scott Dawson maintains the English colonists who settled the so-called Lost Colony before disappearing from history were never really lost. They simply moved to live with their native friends - the Croatoans of Hatteras.

The book is titled The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island . It details the belief that Dawson has held for years, based on the research he has conducted and the artifacts he has uncovered: that the colonists lived with the native people in the 16th century.

"They were never lost," Dawson told the Associated Press. "The mystery is over."

Dawson and a team of archaeologists, historians, botanists, geologists and others have conducted digs on small plots in Buxton and Frisco, North Carolina, for 11 years.

Dawson and his wife, Maggie, formed the Croatoan Archaeological Society when the digs began. Mark Horton, a professor and archaeologist from England's University of Bristol leads the project. Henry Wright, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, is the project's expert on native history.

Researchers have found thousands of artifacts showing a mix of English and native life roughly four-to-six feet deep in the soil. Parts of swords, rings, writing slates, gun parts and glass are in the same layer of soil as indigenous pottery and arrowheads.

Some of those discoveries are on display at the Hatteras library. The rest are in storage.

In addition to the archaeology, Dawson cites written records. John White reflected on finding the writing on the post, "I greatly joyed that I had found a certain token of their being at Croatoan where Manteo was born ...." Manteo was a tribe member who travelled with earlier expeditions and was baptized a Christian on Roanoke Island.

A bad storm and a near mutiny kept White from ever reaching Hatteras. He returned to England without ever seeing his colony again.

Dawson also points to documents from the English colony of Jamestown that show the Roanoke colony did leave their camp to live with their native friends. And more than a century later, English explorer John Lawson found natives with blue eyes who recounted they had ancestors who could "speak out of a book," Lawson wrote.

Evidence of living side by side

Dawson maintains the evidence shows the colony left Roanoke Island with the Croatoans to settle on Hatteras Island. They thrived, ate well, had mixed families and endured for generations.

In addition to the artifacts, the team found round post holes where natives constructed their homes that sat just 25 to 60 feet away from square post holes made by English during the same period.

"They were in the Indian village surrounded by long houses," Dawson said.

"It's not unlikely that one group might have gone up the Chesapeake, up the Albemarle," adds Horton. "But I'm pretty confident one group at least, probably the pretty substantial part, came out to Hatteras Island."

And to Dawson, that is the most important finding.

"You're robbing an entire nation of people of their history by pretending Croatoan is a mystery on a tree," said Dawson. "These were a people that mattered a lot."

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New book claims to solve one of America's oldest unsolved mysteries.

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As Glenn Miller's musical career soared, he traded in his commercial success for a military uniform to entertain US troops during World War II. Then, on a foggy afternoon, December 15, 1944, he took off from England heading for France. His plane vanished over the English Channel. Glenn Miller was never seen again.

Since that fateful day, Glenn Miller's disappearance has remained a mystery. Did friendly fire destroy the plane? Was Miller involved in espionage? Was he on a secret mission to end the war?

Recent discoveries-including an intriguing entry in an aircraft spotter's log-give the History Detectives fresh leads and new clues to explore. Along the way, they learn of the unusual role Glenn Miller and his music played in winning hearts and minds during World War II. Can they find out what happened to this beloved bandleader once and for all?

The Glenn Miller Archive
College of Music
University of Colorado Boulder

This is a place for opinions, comments, questions and discussion; a place where viewers of History Detectives can express their points of view and connect with others who value history. We ask that posters be polite and respectful of all opinions. History Detectives reserves the right to delete comments that don't conform to this conduct. We will not respond to every post, but will do our best to answer specific questions, or address an error.

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As Glenn Miller's musical career soared, he traded in his commercial success for a military uniform to entertain US troops during World War II. Then, on a foggy afternoon, December 15, 1944, he took off from England heading for France. His plane vanished over the English Channel. Glenn Miller was never seen again.

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Mysterious disappearance of Glenn Miller's airplane might be solved

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From friendly fire incidents to weather conditions, explore the various theories about what might have happened to Glenn Miller's plane that foggy December day.

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Legendary bandleader Glenn Miller disappears over the English Channel | December 15, 1944 | HISTORY

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After departing from an airfield outside London on December 15, 1944, a single‑engine aircraft carrying trombonist and bandleader Glenn Miller goes missing over the English Channel. Miller was traveling to France for a congratulatory performance for American troops that had recently helped to liberate Paris. Miller, the biggest star on the American pop‑music scene in […]

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One of history's most devastating fires started on October 8, 1871. But was Mrs. O'Leary's cow really to blame? Let's investigate the facts and theories behind this historic disaster that destroyed much of Chicago.

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The Great Chicago Fire: A Chicago Stories Special Documentary

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Read actual newspaper reports from the days following the Great Chicago Fire. These firsthand accounts give us important clues about what really happened that fateful night.

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Research Guides: Great Chicago Fire of 1871: Topics in Chronicling America: Introduction

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A guide for researching the topic of the “Great Chicago Fire of 1871” in the Chronicling America digital collection of historic newspapers.

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Amelia Earhart Plane | History Detectives | PBS

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Listen to recreations of the last radio communications from Amelia Earhart's plane and examine the evidence that researchers have gathered over the years.

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Dozens heard Amelia Earhart's distress signals, researchers say

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See how modern technology and satellite imagery are helping researchers search for Amelia's plane in the Pacific Ocean. Could new clues solve this mystery?

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This page contains all of the links and basic information about the Earhart Project.

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Discover what modern archaeologists have found at the Roanoke site and how these artifacts help us understand what might have happened to the colonists.

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Findings from Archaeological Dig at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site – 2021 (U.S. National Park Service)

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What Happened to the Lost Colony at Roanoke? | National Geographic

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The Inexplicable Disappearance of Roanoke | History's Greatest Mysteries (Season 4)

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80 years later, Glenn Miller’s sudden disappearance remains unsolved

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Glenn Miller was the swing era’s biggest star. Then, he vanished without a trace.

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In the spring of 1944, the war in Europe was nearing a turning point. Axis and Allies alike were waiting for the long-anticipated Allied invasion of the continent, and both sides were preparing. In spite of the monumental responsibilities required of the Supreme Allied Commander in the weeks before the invasion, General Dwight Eisenhower was thinking ahead to the days, weeks, and months that would follow. Eisenhower knew that those same GIs who needed the connection to home and boost of morale brought about by the music made available to them through the American Forces Network (AFN) would need to keep that connection once they crossed the English Channel.

In May 1944, Eisenhower put out an order to create an additional radio program to follow Allied troops into continental Europe. Personnel from the AFN, SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) staff, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had to work together, overcoming the usual rivalries and competition over who was really in control over the programming and whether the Americans and British should continue their own separate broadcasts. Eisenhower insisted that the programming be a mix of British, American, and Canadian programming, flowing seamlessly together in order to further unify Allied troops who would be fighting in Europe and helping to dissuade any rivalries between the nations. After some firm threats to cut out the BBC and turn the entire program over to SHAEF, an agreement was reached and the program was quickly put together. The Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme (AEFP) first hit the airwaves at 5:55 a.m, (Double British Summer Time) on June 7, 1944.

As part of his plan for AEFP, Eisenhower sent a letter to General Henry "Hap" Arnold, the Commanding General of the US Army Air Forces (USAAF), requesting Captain Glenn Miller, his Army Air Forces Band, and his radio production unit be transferred to the United Kingdom. Eisenhower wanted Miller's band to be the American Band of the Allied Expeditionary Forces (ABAEF) and a feature of the upcoming AEFP. Miller didn't hesitate. He had been appealing to take his band to England. The opportunity was exactly what he wanted.

Miller flew to England while his 60 plus member organization took the slow route on board the RMS Queen Elizabeth, finally arriving in London in late June 1944. The timing was nearly disastrous. On June 13, German forces began to launch the first of their "retribution" weapons ( Vergeltungswaffen), the V-1 flying bomb. Nicknamed doodlebugs, the V-1 was one-ton bomb built into a winged craft powered by a pulse jet engine. V-1s rained down on an already Blitz destroyed London for months in 1944. Miller quickly tired of the threat and moved his band 50 miles north to Bedford on July 2. The next day, a V-1 landed in the street in front of the quarters the band had vacated and destroyed the building, killing over 60 American servicemen. But Miller's band was safe, and they were about to get very busy.

Out of harm's way, Miller's newly designated American Band of the AEF (the band was often still referred to as the Major Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band) started on a grueling schedule. The full 50 member band traveled to London weekly to record broadcasts for the AEFP and BBC. In addition, smaller dance and jazz bands within the larger orchestra recorded additional programs in Bedford. These programs brought the band to the attention of the British public, who quickly became avid listeners and huge fans.

Miller conducts the band during a concert in England. US Air Force photograph.

On top of their heavy recording schedule, the band toured England, performing at Army Air Forces air bases around the country where they were met with wild cheering and great enthusiasm. Lieutenant General Jimmy Doolittle, Commanding Officer, Eighth Air Force, said of the band, "Next to a letter from home, Capt. Miller, your organization is the greatest morale booster in the ETO." With the band's continuing success, Miller was promoted to Major, receiving official word of the promotion in August 1944.

The late summer and early fall of 1944 was a busy time of collaboration for the ABAEF. Artists such as Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore had arrived in England and began to record with the band. Shore and the band even recorded at the HMV Abbey Road Studios, not yet made famous. Celebrities like Bing were also in England to record a propaganda program, run by an overseas branch of the Office of War Information, the American Broadcast Station in Europe. The program, called "The Wehrmacht Hour," was hosted in German by Ilse Weinberger. Guests such as Miller would attempt to participate in a German language exchange with Isle during the show. Miller's premier vocalist, Johnny Desmond even sang some of the band's popular songs in German. The program was a hit in Germany, listened to by both military personnel and civilians.

Paris fell to the Allies in August, and Miller was eager to get to the continent where he could play for GIs on leave in the city. But the AEFP and BBC didn't want to let him go. They relied heavily upon constant recordings from his band to fill their programming, and the logistics of recording in Paris and returning the recordings to London were complicated. To gain their approval, Miller agreed to a brutal recording schedule. From November 20 to December 12, the ABAEF recorded an astounding 84 hours of programming. He was cleared to go, and the announcement was made-Glenn Miller was headed to Paris.

With a Christmas Day performance scheduled, Miller was eager to get to Paris. There had been difficulty coordinating lodgings and other spaces required for his more than 60 member organization, and he was ordered to Paris himself to finish the work. Again, Miller faced difficulty. The weather was terrible-cold and foggy. Regular transportation flights were canceled, and Miller was getting antsy. The band was scheduled to fly to Paris on December 16, and Miller had to arrive before to firm up their plans.

Celebrities, like Miller, were required to have all air transportation formally approved, but Miller was too focused on the task at hand to worry about military bureaucracy. When he ran into his friend Lieutenant Colonel Norman Baessell, who offered Miller a seat on a flight to Paris on December 15, he didn't hesitate to accept. Inclement weather continued on the 15th, but when a UC-64A Norseman landed at Twinwood Farm Airfield just before 2 p.m., Miller and Baessell boarded the plane. Piloted by Flight Officer John R. Stuart Morgan, the transport plane had to be flown below the cloud cover, anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 feet. It was not an ideal day for a flight, and Miller and Baessell were not officially recorded on any manifests.

A Norseman, similar to the one Miller and Baessell boarded at Twinwood Farm Airfield. US Air Force photograph.

On December 18, the band finally arrived in Paris. Landing at the Orly airport, the band was quickly confused and concerned when Miller was not there to meet them. SHAEF was contacted to locate him, but they were unaware he had flown to Paris. Investigation led to a Missing Air Crew Report, filed on the 18. It was for a missing Norseman, flown by Flight Officer Morgan. Since Baessell and Miller had taken the flight without clearing any of the proper channels, they were not listed on the report. Miller's administrative officer, Lieutenant Don Haynes, had driven the pair to the airfield and realized the horrific truth: Miller and Baessell were missing.

Over the decades, many theories came about as to what happened to Major Glenn Miller, from the likely-mechanical failure, to the outrageous-that Miller had died in a brothel in Paris and the flight was a cover-up. In the 1980s a former Royal Air Force member claimed that he saw a jettisoned bomb from a returning bombing run hit a Norseman over the Channel and destroy it. That theory, like the rest, was eventually debunked. The most realistic cause for the aircraft's disappearance is mechanical failure. The Norseman had a carburetor that was known to freeze over, and in the cold December weather, that was a dangerous reality. Even if the plane had landed in the Channel, the passengers would have had little chance of survival in the frigid water.

The band was scheduled to perform on Christmas Day, but no official word had gone out about Miller's disappearance. Pre-recorded programs were still being played, and outside of the band and SHAEF, few knew he was gone. On Christmas Eve 1944, the world learned that Major Glenn Miller was missing in action. The band's mission was too important to stop, even with the loss of their beloved leader. And so they played on.

By the time the Army Air Forces Band returned to the United States in August 1945, they had made over 300 personal appearances and played for more than 1,250,000 military personnel in Europe. Millions on both sides of the fight had had their spirits lifted by the music of Glenn Miller. The orchestra was disbanded in November 1945. The war was over, the men free to return to civilian life. Swing was on its way out, but the music of Major Glenn Miller and the Army Air Forces Band still delights audiences and listeners today, 75 years after his disappearance.

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Major Glenn Miller: The Loss of an Icon | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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"We didn't come here to set any fashions in music. We merely came to bring a much-needed touch of home to some lads who have been here a couple of years." - Glenn Miller

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The Lost Colony - Fort Raleigh National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)

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Discover the story of The Lost Colony on Roanoke Island and unearth a mystery
that has baffled historians for centuries.

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The mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance somewhere over the Pacific Ocean in July 1937 during her around-the-world flight attempt persists to the present day, and is especially alive and well on the Internet. If you were to Google the term "Amelia Earhart Disappearance," for example, the list of hits would be about 1,950,000 items! Some websites, too numerous to mention, are filled with crank conspiratorial ideas. One, for example, militarycorruption.com, claims that U.S. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal was involved in the cover-up of the destruction of Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E at Aslito Field on Saipan in 1944. The site doesn't exactly say why Forrestal would have done such a thing, but the implication is that he was attempting to efface any evidence that might have implicated Earhart in a secret spy mission for the U.S. government.

Nevertheless, the idea that people are still fascinated by Earhart's disappearance after seventy-three years, whether it is tied up in conspiratorial theories or not, is worthy of note. The government put forth an extraordinary attempt to find Earhart that went on for sixteen days, involved nine vessels, four thousand crewmen, and sixty-six aircraft at a cost of more than $4 million. All of this was to no avail. As Tom Crouch puts it, the contingent of ships and aircraft "searched an area of the Pacific roughly the size of Texas without turning up a clue. Radio operators in the United States and across the Pacific reported receiving everything from surefire messages from Earhart to strange sounds that could have been from her. Authorities dismissed the flurry of reports as either wishful thinking or cruel hoaxes."

Those wishful thoughts and cruel hoaxes seemed to be a harbinger of things to come. Almost immediately after Earhart's disappearance, stories about Earhart's whereabouts began to pop up. Perhaps more important, a few years after Earhart was declared legally dead on January 5, 1939, her husband George Palmer Putnam approved a treatment for a film to be titled Stand By to Die, to be produced by RKO, which contained some resemblances to the facts about Earhart's life and disappearance, for which the Amelia Earhart estate would receive $7500. (Putnam had hoped that his own idea for a film about his wife, which would be called Lady with Wings: The Story of My Wife, Amelia Earhart, would be produced, but there had been no takers, and the Earhart estate was in poor financial condition.) Putnam reluctantly agreed to sign the agreement so long as there would be no obvious similarities between the film and Earhart's life.

The film was eventually produced by RKO, and it was renamed Flight for Freedom.

It starred Rosalind Russell as a woman aviator, Tonie Carter, whose ambition was to fly around the world, and Fred MacMurray, as Randy Britton, a hotshot pilot who accompanies Tonie on the flight as navigator. Flight for Freedom appears to have laid the groundwork for a whole series of speculations about what happened to Earhart and Noonan. These scenarios range from the idea that the flight had been a secret spying mission for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the notion that Earhart and Noonan had landed on Saipan, and were captured and killed by the Japanese, to the idea that Earhart was captured by the Japanese and had reappeared as "Tokyo Rose," a name for women whom the Japanese forced to broadcast propaganda to American troops in the Pacific during World War II, or that Earhart had assumed another identity and was discovered to be living in New Jersey.

What probably did happen to Earhart and Noonan? Richard Gillespie, head of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), is an Earhart disappearance researcher who has gained some credibility. TIGHAR has made numerous trips to Nikumaroro (formerly Gardner Island), a remote coral atoll in the Western Pacific Ocean, the place where the organization believes Earhart and Noonan ended up. They have turned up some interesting finds: an aluminum panel that might possibly have come from an Electra; a piece of curved glass that might be a window from an Electra; a heel from a woman's shoe like the kind of footware, Earhart wore, among other items. None of these, however, can conclusively be connected to Earhart and Noonan. Gillespie has written a book titled Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance, which puts forth his ideas about the disappearance.

Elgin Long, an experienced pilot and another longtime Earhart disappearance theorist, offers perhaps the most plausible explanation for the disappearance. Having experienced bad weather during the long 4,113 km (2,556 miles) flight from Lea to Howland Island, Earhart and Noonan used up their supply of fuel, and crash landed in the ocean. Long notes the urgency in Earhart's voice on the radio on the way to Howland Island, when she was trying to locate the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Itasca, the ship that was assigned the task of providing navigational and radio links to Earhart and Noonan. Long has written a book (with Marie K. Long) titled Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved, in which he puts forth a well-constructed argument that the aircraft came to rest at the bottom of the ocean near Howland Island.

On the significance of the disappearance, Doris Rich, one of Earhart's biographers, believes that "nothing she might have said or done, no scheme George Palmer Putnam might have designed, could so enhance Earhart's renown as the mystery of her disappearance. She had been famous. By vanishing she became legendary." By the same token, her disappearance ironically seems to have overtaken her life's accomplishments as an aviator and advocate for women's rights. Susan Ware, author of Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism, points out that "with all the mythology surrounding Amelia Earhart's last flight in 1937, it is hard to assess her career separately from the ongoing mystery of her disappearance." Ware suggests that it is Earhart's life, not the disappearance and presumed death that matters.

Nevertheless, it is Earhart's disappearance that has captured the imagination of Americans in the nearly three quarters of a century since she vanished. What does this say about us as a society? The implication, perhaps, is that Americans are prone to believe things that are unproven and unable to think analytically enough to question ideas founded on baseless evidence. Another is that we have an obsessive need to explain mysteries that have no obvious solutions. Whatever the reasons, the ideas about Earhart's disappearance, like the widespread belief in UFOs, or in the various conspiracy theories that have arisen around such events as the JFK assassination, Watergate, and 9/11, persist and have become part and parcel of the American psyche.

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The Legend of Amelia Earhart's Disappearance

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The mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance somewhere over the Pacific Ocean in July 1937 during her around-the-world flight attempt persists to the present day, and is especially alive and well on the Internet.

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The Earhart Tragedy: Old Mystery, New Hypothesis

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Based on interviews with people who were on the island for which Amelia was bound, the story that never fails to captivate takes a troublesome turn.

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How did the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 impact Chicago and its architecture?

OCTOBER INFERNO

On the night of October 8, 1871, fire spread across Chicago. While the cause of the blaze is unknown, its origin was at 558 West DeKoven Street-an address that today is home to a Chicago Fire Department training facility. An estimated 300 people died and 100,000 were left homeless by the three-day inferno that erased 2,100 acres of the city. The center of Chicago and the heart of the business district were wiped out. Yet, just 20 years after the fire, the city's population had grown from 300,000 to 1 million people.

Historians love to debate the impact of the Great Fire on Chicago's development. Would Chicago have developed in the same way without the fire? As author and Chicago historian Neal Samors told CAF and WBEZ's Curious City, had the fire not occurred, "Chicago would probably have been a much smaller metropolis and not the second largest city in the United States."

While many wooden houses and businesses were leveled by the fire (plus 500 miles of wooden sidewalk!), some multi-unit residential and institutional buildings were already being built using solid masonry construction. And because much of the city's major industries were not destroyed in the fire, those economic engines continued to fuel the city's growth and rebuilding. Booming industries such as the Union Stockyards and lumberyards were located outside of the burn zone, which was roughly Halsted Street east to Lake Michigan and Roosevelt Avenue north to Fullerton Parkway.

Timing is everything. By 1871, Chicago had already claimed a central role in the U.S. economy. It was the most important processing point for raw materials heading east from the frontier and the biggest interchange in the new national railroad system. Timber and paper industries took hold first, then came meat packing and steel production. Chicago's old wooden infrastructure may have slowed industrial growth and the development of lands for residential and commercial use. But within months of the fire, a land rush began. Following another destructive fire in 1874, new building codes were written to ensure that most new construction contained more fire-resistant brick and stone.

SLOW RISE OF SKYSCRAPERS

The myth is often told that the fire cleared the city-wiping the slate clean so tall new skyscrapers could be designed and built. But in reality, a different story unfolded. Immediately after the fire, both downtown and in the neighborhoods, new construction looked very similar to what was built before the fire. With time and money at stake, as often happens after a natural disaster, business owners quickly rebuilt what they knew. Typical four-story downtown commercial buildings were often a hybrid of brick, stone and iron construction. It would be another 10-15 years before the earliest skyscrapers-8 to 10 stories, with structural steel frames, elevators and innovative foundations-would come to replace those first post-fire buildings.

Old Town gives us a glimpse of what pre-fire Chicago looked like. Although the neighborhood was nearly leveled in the fire, it was immediately rebuilt in a similar style and scale. Old Town avoided (through a strong-arm political deal) the new boundaries that dictated fireproof construction. As a result, the two-story wood-frame cottages in the area resemble the Italianate homes and humbler two-story worker's cottages found throughout the city prior to the fire.

Still more questions remain. How many of the 18,000 structures vanquished in the fire would have outlasted the twin threats of growth and neglect to reach the present day? Would the mansions along Monroe Street, Michigan Avenue and Wabash Avenue have survived the early skyscraper boom? Would creative new skyscrapers have been designed as early without a push from skyrocketing land values downtown?

A PHOENIX FROM THE ASHES

It's interesting to speculate on how the city would be different without the Great Fire of 1871. Many historians agree that the city that rose like a phoenix from the ashes would likely have kept growing without the fire. Perhaps it would have done so without the grand plans and large population boom that fueled commerce, construction and innovation into the 20th century.

Nearly 150 years later, few people can doubt the significance of the fire in Chicagoans' minds. Today, it's remembered as the second of four stars on the Chicago flag. The next time you see the flag fluttering on the side of a building, you may recall the story of a windy day in 1871 when Chicago changed forever.

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The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 | Chicago Architecture Center

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A devastating fire that reshaped the city's architecture and urban planning, leading to significant advancements in fire safety and building codes.

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Be sure to read today’s Wonder of the Day before it goes up in flames!

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Learn about the brave English settlers who established a colony on Roanoke Island in 1585. What was life like for these early American colonists?

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Lost Colony of Roanoke Island, North Carolina | What happened to the Virginia colonists?