By Ross Eric Gibson

For many people who lived through the Civil War, Saturday, April 14, 1865, was indelibly remembered for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Yet Saturday April 14, 1894, was also a time to see how much progress Santa Cruz had made since those dark days of the war. The town’s most beautiful business structure was the artistic Pease Building, with three brick stories, two slant-bay window columns on the facade, and spear-point finials lining the parapet. Then there was the 2-year-old Hotaling inn, considered the finest hotel between San Francisco and Monterey. The Leonard Building with its corner drum turret, was one of the modern Victorians at the corner of Pacific and Cooper Street. And the 1866 Courthouse had a New England grandeur. Santa Cruz had a fully modern water system, providing plenty of water for drinking and firefighting.

It was reassuring to live in such a wonderful town. Then at 10:40 p.m., the fire bell rang. Soon a large number of volunteer firemen gathered and learned a fire had been spotted at the back of Finkeldey’s Grocery. Firemen hooked up their hoses to the city system, only to discover there was no water. Upon inquiry, it was learned that at 5:30, the water works had a 14-inch eddy valve blow out in front of the pressure regulator, making it necessary to close down the system to make repairs. Firemen then tried the antiquated Hihn Company hydrants, finding only enough water pressure to reach the first-floor roof. At 11 p.m. the Pogonip Fire Company showed up, a professional crew serving Kron’s Tannery on River Street. The crisis had no fire chief to direct activities, so H.F. Kron joined Robert Effey and Mayor Wm. T. Jeter to direct the response.

The fire started in a board structure built in 1849 by the Cooper Brothers at the corner of Front and Cooper streets. Front Street was the town’s Gold Rush Main Street, rows of shanties built by transient merchants with little thought of permanence or quality. Later, businessmen moved to Pacific Avenue to build modern structures, and Front Street was resettled as Chinatown. The old Cooper Brothers store was burning quickly due to its age, and fire was spreading to neighboring buildings on Front Street, and along Cooper Street. Cooper Street housed the County Courthouse to the south, and a row of professional offices for lawyers, doctors and insurance agents to the north.

Because the hose spray could not reach the second floors, there was a mad scramble by lawyers to save their most expensive asset: their law libraries. Mayor Jeter had the largest law library, and had them carried to the safety of the fortress-like brick County Courthouse. Many other lawyers and doctors also rescued their libraries. When the old Leonard Building caught fire, it panicked merchants, and almost every store in the downtown was engaged in packing up their inventory, while thousands gathered watching with helpless desperation. The water company was making repairs on High Street, working quickly as they saw the fire growing from a distance.

Chinatown

Meanwhile, the fire was also creeping up the west side of Front Street, producing such scalding heat that windows across the street exploded, catching Chinatown on fire. At the three Chinese laundries, it surprised on-lookers at how quickly they rescued most of the laundry, which belonged to their customers. Their first priority was to save all the fixtures in their Joss Temple, where they revered their deities for luck, wealth and protection. They also saved everything in the Congregational Chinese Mission. Their most important personal possessions were their bedding and steamer trunks, but poor Soon Hing had arrived at his store too late, regretting that his cash drawer still contained $100 and a gold watch. Others noticed his store burned with a delicious aroma, due to the supply of potatoes that the fire now baked. The Chinese American residents took their possessions down to the riverside, where they camped in tents made of blankets.

For those on Pacific Avenue, it was disheartening to see the elegant new Hotaling inn burst into flames, until all the third-story windows were sending out blades of fire. The flames only lessened when the upper floors collapsed into the building. With a south-blowing wind, embers drifted toward the County Courthouse, fire-proof, except for its wooden cupola. A fire started in the cupola and then made its way down into the building, until only those fireproof walls remained. Most lawyers only found at most a couple volumes of their law libraries. Fearing the jail was threatened, the inmates were handcuffed together and waited in the street. By midnight, 50% of Chinatown lay in ruins, and the majority of the Tricorner Block (bounded by Pacific, Front and Cooper streets) was burned or burning.

Finally at 12:05 a.m., the city water was turned back on after an hour and 15 minutes being repaired. The spray from the hoses could reach about 70 feet. Now the race was on to stop the fire from spreading. On Pacific Avenue, three fine brick buildings threatened by fire were the Warner Building, the Simpson Building and the Pease Building.

Tall burning buildings

The Warner Building was ignited by the Hotaling inn and was soon a complete loss. Two men brought hoses up to the roof of the Pease Building, wetting it down to prevent fire spread. Unfortunately, the Simpson Building next to it started to burn, and the flames broke through the roof. The men held the flames off as long as they could, but at one point the brass nozzles on the fire hoses became hot as branding irons, and they dropped them. When they went to the side of the building, the ladder they had used was no longer there.

They cried out for help, but the calamity made it hard to be heard. By the time the crowd in the street noticed them, their clothes were catching on fire, and their efforts to pat out the flames caused their hands to blister. The crowd was transfixed in horror to see these brave firefighters about to meet a gruesome end. Then young Fred O. Hihn came with a ladder. He climbed it with a hose, and extinguished their clothing, as firemen in the street kept Fred from catching fire. The men were rescued to the cheers of the crowd.

A liquor store had been emptied of its contents in hopes of preventing burning bottles of liquor from incinerating the structure. But by early morning, there were drunks up and down the avenue who had availed themselves of this free firewater. Given the heat from the three-story blaze of buildings on the east side of Pacific Avenue, it took diligent efforts to keep the west side of Pacific Avenue from catching fire. One building was swaddled in wet blankets. The Sentinel Building caught fire twice (corner of Pacific and Church) but was quickly extinguished. Nearby, H.G. Insel decided he would reduce the danger by removing two cans of gun powder from his store, which he dumped in a lot on Church Street. The next thing anyone knew, a drunk came back up Pacific Avenue with the gunpowder cans under each arm. They marveled that he was encountering the intense heat of burning buildings, and the powder kegs did not blow him up.

By 2 a.m., the streets were full of debris, power lines, tall piles of brick and rescued merchandise. The flames were still not under control. Then at 3 a.m. the train arrived from Watsonville, making it to Santa Cruz in 33 minutes. They brought their steam fire engine and 100 firefighters under Fire Chief H.F. Peckham. It was a welcome sight for men who’d been fighting the fire for five hours straight. And at 3:30, a special train arrived from San Jose with more fire fighters and equipment. The fire was finally under control by 4 a.m. The Tricorner Block was mostly in ruins however the Pease Building had blocked the flames from reaching two wooden 1850s stores, the Hugo Hihn brick building and the brick Flat-Iron Building.

When the sun rose, it revealed the full extent of the disaster. Many had seen their jobs, businesses and buildings vanish overnight. San Francisco papers, the Call, the Chronicle, and Examiner arrived on the morning train to document this disaster in Santa Cruz, the Bay Area’s favorite resort. Then another bell was heard, seeming to presage another disaster. But other bells joined in, and they realized it was Sunday, calling the weary and disheartened to church.

On Monday, the vault of the People’s Bank had cooled enough that it could be opened. To everyone’s surprise, nothing inside had been harmed, singed or infused with smoke. On Tuesday, the insurance men set up all-day offices at the Pacific Ocean House. Here they could see their customers, make assessments and pay their claims. The overall damage was estimated at $300,000, of which only $110,000 was insured. In fact, it was surprising that lawyers and even insurance brokers were among the uninsured. But the one statistic most were glad to say, that not a single life was lost in this disaster.

The displaced residents of Chinatown camped by the river during the fire. Mrs. Mary Fagan (wife of Dr. P.B. Fagan of County Bank) was associated with the Chinese Congregational Mission. She provided temporary refuge in her Mission Street barn, then her husband leased them a few houses at Bellevue Place just behind the old Chinatown. Mrs. Harriet Blackburn provided a place for the Chinese American fire victims to build homes and truck gardens around Blackburn Street. And humble bootblack, George Birkenseer, provided the Chinese American residents a 20-year lease on part of their old Front Street site, for $12 a month, where they built what was known as the Birkenseer Chinatown. The City Council stipulated there would be no more laundries in Chinatown, even though the laundries hadn’t started the fire.