Many descriptions of the Great Gratz Fire of November 4, 1924, have been published – including the accounts of newspapers of the local area and region and summaries of the fire written specially for local histories.
It is believed that the fire began behind the Union House on the southeast corner of Center Street and Market Street. When it was finally extinguished, it appeared to have taken out half of the main square of the town – at least ten buildings burned to the ground!
The account that follows here was written by Harry Shiro Sr., a Lykens Township resident who witnessed the fire.
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I had been in Gratz the night before the fire until about ten o’clock. After I had been in bed for about an hour, our collie dog began to bark. My father was awakened by the barking, so he got up and looked out of the window. He saw the red glow in the sky, so he called me and said, “There must be a fire somewhere.” When I looked out the window, the light from the fire was so intense that I could count the individual trees at the mountain.
I got dressed, put on my boots, because there had already been a heavy dew, and walked across the fields to town. Just as I got there, the Elizabethville fire truck arrived with a tank of water. The water from that truck did not last long, and when it was all gone they started pumping by hand – buckets of water from all the local wells. Then someone would carry it to the fire. The main purpose was to contain the fire and keep it from spreading. Joseph Laudenslager had a “water wagon,” so they sent for it and that helped some.
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From Memories, Volume 2, Gratz Historical Society, 1987.
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