by Wesley Harris
Ruston was barely 20 years old when 1905 arrived.
The young town had grown into Lincoln Parish’s commercial center, with hotels, grocery stores, restaurants, shops, offices, and other businesses crowding its downtown streets. But Ruston had grown faster than the infrastructure needed to protect it.
That became painfully apparent in 1905.
Fire struck again and again that year. A February blaze wiped out half of a principal business block. In May, the town’s printing office burned. In November, two hotels were destroyed, another fire damaged the Louisiana Industrial Institute, and yet another destroyed thousands of dollars’ worth of lumber.
For Ruston, 1905 was the year of fire.
The town had a fire department, but barely by modern standards. Ruston’s earliest equipment was a two-wheeled tank with a hand pump, stored outside the mayor’s office and pushed to fires by whatever manpower was available.
The Ruston Volunteer Fire Department was organized in 1897, coinciding with the arrival of running water. The town purchased a horse-drawn hose and ladder wagon and constructed a small station—really nothing more than a stable for the wagon and its two horses. Ruston would not obtain a motorized fire truck until 1915, and even that truck could not pump water.
That was the fire protection system facing the flames in 1905.
Half a block gone
The year’s first major disaster came before dawn on February 2.
At about 6:30 a.m., fire was discovered in the store of Freyer & Goldberg on Trenton Street. A strong north wind quickly carried the flames through the block.
Newspapers across Louisiana reported the destruction of “one-half of one of the principal business blocks” in Ruston. Among the businesses lost were J. Gordon’s dry goods store, Freyer & Goldberg, H.F. Fort’s grocery, the Lincoln Hotel, and the Ruston Grocery Company. George A. McElroy’s fire insurance office was also destroyed, along with businesses operated by B.H. Miller, J.H. Braswell, W.H. Hearn, T.G. Hardin, J.S. O’Neal, and the Reed Music Company.
Estimates placed the damage between $35,000 and $40,000, with much of the property insured.
The Farmerville Gazette noted the February blaze followed another large Ruston fire just two months earlier, in December.
“This big fire coming so soon after the one which visited Ruston in December makes it pretty hard on the town,” the newspaper observed.
It would get worse.
The Howe Press burns
On Sunday morning, May 7, another alarm sounded. This time it was the Howe Press, Ruston’s printing firm.
The fire gutted the building. A new printing press was badly damaged, two platen presses were left in poor condition, and a large quantity of book and job work already set in type and ready for the press was lost.
The Gazette reported the fire department had extinguished a small blaze at the printing office Saturday night. Firemen believed the danger had passed and left, but early the next morning, the fire returned.
The newspaper reported flames were raging when the fire was discovered and had already gained enough headway that the fire company could not save the building. The loss was placed at about $8,000, with $3,500 insurance.
Investigators believed the first fire had been caused accidentally when a firecracker was thrown onto an electrical wire entering the building. The wire apparently shorted and burned, with smoldering material possibly remaining inside the structure after firefighters departed.
It was an unforgiving era for firefighters. Buildings contained abundant wood, paper, cloth, and other combustible materials. Fighting a fire depended on prompt discovery, getting horses and equipment to the scene, finding a usable water supply, and applying enough water before the flames spread.
Ruston’s firefighters were volunteers working with equipment that would appear primitive only a generation later.
November brings more flames
If Ruston hoped the worst had passed by autumn, November proved otherwise. On November 7, fire broke out at the Atkinson House about 1 p.m., apparently originating in the hotel’s kitchen.
The Atkinson House, occupied by J.A. Atkinson and his family, was destroyed. So was the neighboring Borden Hotel, owned by Mrs. Webb of Monroe and occupied by Mrs. H.G. Chapman. Most of the furniture and belongings were saved, although much of it was badly damaged.
This time, the newspaper specifically credited the firefighters.
“Good work by the firemen saved the adjoining houses,” the Times-Picayune reported.
Three days later, fire struck again.
On November 10, fire destroyed one of J.R. Randolph’s dry kilns and approximately 6,000 feet of lumber. The loss was estimated at $2,000, with no insurance.
A second fire that day consumed a residence belonging to the Industrial Institute. Only about $600 worth of timber and water pipe stored nearby was saved.
That wasn’t all. Another November report noted fire had done slight damage to the main building of the Louisiana Industrial Institute, today’s Louisiana Tech University.
By then, fire was becoming almost routine news in Ruston.
A town ahead of its fire protection
Ruston had not ignored fire protection. Running water arrived and the volunteer department was organized in 1897. But the town was growing faster than its firefighting technology and municipal infrastructure.
A hose wagon was useful only if firefighters could reach an adequate water source with sufficient pressure. Even much larger Louisiana cities struggled with that problem during this period.
Its horse-drawn hose and ladder wagon depended upon the town’s developing water system. The department had no motorized apparatus and no fire engine capable of carrying its own modern pumping system. Those improvements were still years away.
The vulnerability partly explains an architectural decision made at Ruston’s beginning. Along what was known as Brick Row—now Park Avenue—mandatory masonry construction offered considerably better protection than the wooden commercial buildings common in young Southern railroad towns. Ruston’s earliest firefighting capability was rudimentary, making a fire in a frame building particularly dangerous.
The February 1905 fire showed what happened when flames, wooden buildings, and wind came together: a blaze beginning in one store raced through much of a business block.
Yet the November hotel fire demonstrated the other side of the story. Ruston’s volunteer firefighters managed to keep flames that destroyed two hotels from consuming adjoining buildings.
They were learning, and so was the town.
Ruston’s fire protection would gradually improve. The department became motorized in 1915. In 1924, the city purchased an American-LaFrance pumper, finally giving firefighters a motorized apparatus capable of pumping water. Two years later, Ruston built the Central Fire Station and established its first full-time fire department.
Today, the contrast could hardly be greater. Ruston’s Fire Department operates from three stations with more than 60 full-time personnel, and the department holds a Class 1 fire-protection rating, the highest classification recognized by the Property Insurance Association of Louisiana.
That modern system grew from much humbler beginnings — horses, hose wagons, volunteers, and a young municipal water system.
And few years demonstrated the need for something better quite like 1905.
In February, half a downtown business block burned.
In May, the printing office burned.
In November, two hotels burned. A dry kiln burned. An Industrial Institute residence burned. The Institute itself suffered fire damage.
Ruston was growing quickly.
In 1905, its fire protection was still trying to catch up.
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