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The Goldendale Sentinel, Goldendale, WA., May 12, 1938, page 1

GOLDENDALE'S 'BIG FIRE' BLAZED THROUGH CITY FIFTY YEARS AGO FRIDAY

Like Chicago and San Francisco, Goldendale today dates its history either B.F. or A.F., before fire or after fire. Goldendale's big fire burned exactly 50 years ago Friday, May 13, just half a century ago tomorrow.
A sprawling frontier village of false front wooden stores, hay filled livery barns and intermittent hitching racks, the Goldendale that burned down 50 years ago this week, occupied much of the same territory that comprises this city's present business blocks.

NO COW OR LANTERN

While Goldendale has had no Hollywood aid in devising a Mrs. O'Leary's cow "Daisie" to kick over a lantern and start the conflagration, local tradition has its own solution to how out the fire started.
The fire started, tradition says, in a livery stable haymow located somewhere near the present location of the McKenzie Hardware. Some man, no one remembers his name, went into Dixon's livery barn smoking a pipe. Shortly after he came out the fire started.
April 13, 50 years ago was on Sunday and a greater portion of Goldendale's less than 1,000 inhabitants were attending a picnic at Three Creeks when the fire started.

BURNED HOSE CART

So quickly did the fire spread that the crude hose cart that served as Goldendale's fire engine was already in flames when the first fire fighters arrived. Dug wells up and down Main street, in those days served as Goldendale's principal water supply. And it was from these wells that volunteer fire fighters pumped and dipped water to battle the blaze.
Bucket brigade fire fighters could do little more than keep out of the way of the holocaust that swept through the six main blocks of Goldendale's business district, Arthur Harris, one of the few remaining fire fighters of that day recalled this week.

RECALLS FIGHT

On the east the big fire was eventually halted on the corner of Main street across from the present Nickerson Motor company building. It was there that W.H. Ward, Goldendale's pioneer harness maker who climbed to the roof of a wooden building and with a water soaked blanket around him kept flames from the building by spraying a stream of water over the smoking room. Water was pumped by hand from a well across the street. One of the crew of pumpers was Arthur Harris.
On the West end of Main Street the fire was halted at Golden street. The old red barn, torn down in recent years was a new structure on the corner of Main and Golden in those days. With fire raging down the street the late N.B. Brooks, then a fireman, climbed to the roof of the barn and with buckets of water drawn up by means of ropes, managed to keep sparks from igniting the barn.

BURNED SEVEN BLOCKS

Virtually every building in seven downtown Goldendale blocks was burned in that fire of 50 years ago. Flames swept through the first Methodist church located where the present church building stands. Klickitat's court House, a frame structure standing where the Hotel Hall is now located, burned with many of the county's early records. Every building along Main street from Golden to Chatfield was leveled by the flames.
Though no lives were lost in the fire, the absence of Sheriff's William VanVactor from Goldendale with the only keys to the county jail nearly cost of the life of a prisoner. The jail, a small wooden building was already in flames when firefighters realized the plight of the cage criminal.

FEW ALIVE TODAY

Unable to force the lock a group of fire fighters used one of the timbers of the dismantled scaffold on which Timmerman had been hung to batter down the jail door. As it was the prisoner barely had time to crawl through the shattered door before the blazing roof fell in.
Of that valiant group of firefighters who battled Goldendale's big fire that Sunday afternoon 50 years ago, scarcely a handful remain. But to W.H. Ward, Arthur Harris, Frank Fenton, Amos Coley and possibly a half dozen more pioneers May 13, 1888 will never be forgotten.