The Town That Burned in an Hour: The Peshtigo Fire, America’s Deadliest Wildfire, Erased by the Great Chicago Fire
On the night of October 8, 1871, the sky over a small Wisconsin lumber town turned to fire. In little more than an hour, a firestorm hot enough to boil a river dry killed more people than any wildfire in American history. And almost no one remembers it, because 250 miles south, Chicago was burning too.