DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official Paris, Texas marker has to say — and friend, this one's a story worth slowing down for. March 21, 1916. You want to talk about a bad day.
Paris, Texas — a city founded back in the mid-1840s, built up over decades with courthouses and churches and the kind of solid civic bones that take generations to grow — was about to watch most of it disappear in a single night. Now, nobody knows for certain how it started. That's the haunting part.
What is known is this: there was a small trash fire burning near Sid Long's timber warehouse, corner of Southwest 4th Street and Frisco Avenue. Somewhere in that neighborhood, something escaped. And at 5:30 in the evening, an alarm was sounded.
Here's the thing about that day. Substantial rainfall in Paris had last occurred fifty-one days prior. Fifty-one days of drying out, baking down, turning every wooden shingle on every rooftop into kindling.
And then — as if the situation needed any help — winds came gusting up to sixty miles per hour. The high winds set fire to roof shingles in the surrounding blocks, and from there the fire made its own decisions. By the time Mayor Ed H.
McCuistion looked out at what was coming, he decided that widespread conflagration was imminent. He sent out appeals to nearby fire departments. Bonham answered.
Cooper answered. Dallas, Honey Grove, and Hugo, Oklahoma — they all answered the call. Through the night they fought it, and by 3:30 in the morning, the fire was under control.
But the accounting, when it came, was staggering. Two hundred and sixty-four acres burned. One thousand, four hundred and forty buildings — gone.
Three people killed. Property loss estimated at eleven million dollars. And among what was lost: the Federal Building and Post Office, the Lamar County Courthouse and Jail, City Hall, numerous commercial buildings, several churches — structures that had been the backbone of this city since its earliest days.
Residents were living in tents and shacks. Now. Here is where the story turns.
The very next morning, Chamber President Henry P. Mayer prepared a sign for a meeting. One word.
Just one. It read: Smile. That was it.
No speech, no grand proclamation — just that single word held up in the wreckage. The slogan was adopted quickly, and it encouraged residents to rebuild the city with optimism. And there was the Civic League — which, of all the timing in the world, had organized just two days before the fire.
They had come together to talk about beautification. Now they shifted their focus entirely to sanitation, because the need in front of them was immediate and real. Out of town architects came in.
Local builders and citizens went to work. And what rose from those two hundred and sixty-four burned acres became something that historians would later recognize as one of the best examples of architectural integrity and geographically concentrated post-Victorian buildings in the entire United States. A trash fire.
Sixty-mile-an-hour winds. Fifty-one dry days. And one word on a sign the morning after.
Sometimes that's all the kindling a city needs to come back.
What the marker says
On March 21, 1916, a fire swept through Paris that consumed 264 acres and 1,440 buildings and killed three people. Property loss was estimated at $11 million. Paris was founded in the mid-1840s, and many of the town's historic structures were lost in the fire including the Federal Building and Post Office, the Lamar County Courthouse and Jail, City Hall, numerous commercial buildings and several churches. Substantial rainfall in Paris last occurred 51 days prior, and winds gusting up to 60 mph that day likely contributed to the city's dryness. Although no one is certain how the fire started, it is known that there was a small trash fire burning near Sid Long's timber warehouse on SW 4th street and Frisco avenue, and an alarm was sounded at 5:30 p.m. The high winds quickly set fire to roof shingles in the surrounding blocks. Mayor Ed H. Mccuistion sent out appeals to nearby fire departments after he decided that widespread conflagration was imminent. Bonham, Cooper, Dallas, Honey Grove and Hugo, Oklahoma, answered the call, and the fire was under control by 3:30 a.m. Chamber President Henry P. Mayer prepared a sign for a meeting the following day that simply read "Smile." The slogan was adopted quickly and encouraged residents to rebuild the city with optimism. The Civic League, which had organized just two days before, shifted its focus from beautification to sanitation because the fire left many residents living in tents and shacks. Paris was reconstructed quickly with the help of out of town architects, local builders and citizens. Paris" reconstruction produced one of the best examples of architectural integrity and geographically-concentrated post-Victorian buildings in the United States.