In 1918, holidays in Cloquet were met with hammers and hope

For more than a year, Carlton County has been commemorating the firestorm of 1918. There have been photographs and artifact displays, talks by historians, and readings of first-person accounts. And yet it can still be difficult to fathom just what life was like in the county that fall with a moonscape of ashes all around.

It's what makes things eerie when the fire gets placed back in the news 100 years later, not as a historical marker but as a gruesome comparison to what is happening now in California. The Camp Fire near Chico has claimed scores of lives, with hundreds of people still missing. It is the state's deadliest fire and, as the New York Times and other news outlets have reported in the past week, the worst fire since the one that swept through the county and east to Duluth in October of 1918.

The pictures and video coming from California bring the county's worst days into better focus. And, oddly enough, those visual scenes could be coupled with another this Thanksgiving, as smoke from California is expected to ride the jet stream and enter into our own space here in Minnesota.

There was certainly a mish-mash of emotion in the county as the holidays approached in 1918.

The country was buoyed by the end of the Great War, with President Wilson calling that year's Thanksgiving a cause for celebration and awe at the sacrifices made to win the war.

"We have cause for such rejoicing as revives and strengthens in us all the best traditions of our national history," Wilson proclaimed. "A new day shines about us, in which our hearts take new courage and look forward with new hope to new and greater duties."

But each day in Carlton County that November brought fresh sorrows along with silver linings. The lumber companies opened in the early part of the month, with barracks sprouting up for the workers.

"The mill men are taking heart," one newspaper report said. "As they hear the 'song of the saw' which means bread and butter for themselves and their little ones."

The sound of the mills was accompanied by the sound of hammers. Hundreds of men poured into the county to build temporary homes, many going up in less than a day. By Nov. 28, Thanksgiving Day, more than 300 "kitchen homes" were up. They were called that because they were designed to serve as kitchens when the homes were expanded in the years to come. As the years passed and the city rebuilt, the small structures became known as "fire shacks."

Winter cover was the top priority as people streamed back into the county from shelters in Duluth and Superior.

Fuel was being acquired in the form of coal, made scarce in the war years. Residents couldn't rely on scrap slab wood from the mills. The lumber companies had to use up all they could to keep the plants running. Residents were asked to "bank up" their shelters with dirt to provide extra insulation.

Each day that November, influenza loomed. Scores of people survived the fire only to succumb to the flu weeks later. And it did not discriminate. Children and young adults were especially susceptible. Even a hero from the fire could not escape "the grip." George A. Johnson, engineer of the last rescue train to leave Cloquet on Oct. 12, helped in the relief effort until he was too weak with the flu to carry on. He died in Wisconsin in early November, less than a month after his fiery run.

By the end of November, flu cases at Garfield school, used as a hospital in Cloquet after the fire, were down. At one time, there were 167 cases there with countless others in the rural areas suffering at home. By the end of the month, the makeshift hospital was transitioning back to a school, with flu cases dwindling to only a handful.

Reports of soldiers from the county missing or dying in the final days of war continued to trickle in as well.

Despite all the gloom, news accounts from that November kept up an appearance of the phoenix rising from the ashes. One headline from early in the month is a good example: "Optimism seen in Cloquet; city hums with life."

That story marveled at the luck of the lumber mills avoiding the worst of the fire and powering back up. Along with the housing, several businesses were up and running as well. Stoicism was trumped ahead of any bleak notions from the fire.

"If there are any pessimists in Cloquet, they don't show it in their faces," the news report said. "Everybody is hastening the job of getting homes under cover so that the families may return from scattered points."

But there were private doubts about prospects in the burned-out area. Curt Brown, in his recent book "Minnesota 1918," included a letter from Sherman Coy of Northern Lumber Company to his brother a week after the fire. He recalled the heroism and horror of the week before and his amazement in all he had seen and been through. Then he looked forward. "There are no plans for the future yet," Coy wrote. "I don't know what will become of us - whether I will stay here or not. It's very uncertain. ... The town can not be what it was in our lifetime. No trees are left, and no vegetation ... it's like a bleak wilderness."

Anna Dickie Olesen was a key figure in the aftermath of the fire. She fought for monetary claims residents were at first denied because the fire was deemed an "act of God." As Brown writes in his book, Olesen testified often before federal lawmakers, sharing the experiences of county residents during and after the fire.

She noted that the fire came at a terrible time, since so many people had been storing coal and wood for the winter along with food. "That is why we suffered so much harder than if the fire had come in the summer or the spring," she noted.

Olesen and her family spent the months after the fire living in a cloakroom at Garfield school. Others were worse off, she said. "People were living in shacks, here, there, and everywhere. ... Building up their little shacks, and suffering."

Two days before Thanksgiving in 1918, the state received a report from a panel investigating the cause of the fire. It surely did little to ease the minds of county residents. The report said that while sparks from railroad operations held some of the blame, other factors - dry conditions, slash piles of timber, and high winds - were also to blame. The "act of God" designation meant that some residents wouldn't receive compensation for nearly two decades.

But, as Olesen noted, survival was foremost on the minds of residents as winter came. Around Thanksgiving, the news reports kept up the stoicism.

"For they are going to rebuild Cloquet," one story noted. "There is no longer any doubt of it. There wasn't any doubt from the first meeting in Carlton, when merchants met together and [expressed] their thanks to other communities."

Indeed, the burned-out area had many thanks to allot. Communities throughout the country raised money to be sent to the area for relief. The Red Cross and government agencies also played a large role.

That forging ahead, in rebuilding what was lost, may have drowned out the personal sorrow that holiday season.

But those chipper news reports did, once in a while, report on the psychological toll. "These are hard days for Cloquet. There may be harder ones this winter - days when it will keep everyone hustling to provide fuel, food, medical attendance and just the necessities of life, to say nothing of the big look forward."

Another news report also touched on the realities as the holidays loomed. "The aspect of the once flourishing city is now a cross between a one-night western mining town and a bit of Flanders after the passing of the Huns."

In December, a pine tree was placed on the third floor of Garfield and decorated for Christmas. On the tree were gifts for the city's more than 1,000 children from charitable groups, notably $3,000-worth from the Junior Red Cross in Minneapolis. Today that equates to $46,000.

"The entire population attended" a celebration at the tree, Anna Olesen wrote in a letter to the Red Cross. Carolers moved about the city on Christmas Eve, singing songs at the shacks. There were four days of events around the holiday. It was Cloquet tradition, Olesen wrote.

Full normalcy was still a long way off, but it was trickling back in.

"Overlooking blackened, charred ruins and ashes," the Duluth News Tribune reported, "unmindful of homes and structures hurriedly thrown together, the people were just as ever – yes, even happier. Their spirit was wonderful."