Back in 1871, there was a great fire in Chicago. Everyone knows the story about how Mrs. O'Leary's cow started the fire. Few people know about the Peshtigo Fire that occurred on the same day October 8, 1971 because it was over shadowed by the Chicago Fire. However, it was a bigger, caused more destruction, and killed more people.
To honor their history and remember the past, Peshtigo has a museum dedicated to the fire and history of the area. It is located in an old church and opened every day Memorial Day to October 8th from 10-4. Based on the small window of being open every year, it doesn't give us many opportunities to get there unless it rains and you have a tank of gas to waste. Since the hubby's game got rained out and we had a full tank of gas, we took a road trip up to Peshtigo to check out the museum. It's just over an hour from the valley to get there.
Upon entering we were met by a very shy docent who gave us the history of the Peshtigo Fire and showed us a few artifacts there were recovered.
We then had an opportunity to explore the rest of the museum which included the basement of the church. There were a plethora of articles that would have been used around the same time of the fire that were donated by fire survivors or their families or other area families.
After exploring the museum, we went outside the graveyard. At the back of the cemetery is a mass grave of unidentified fire victims.
Although I was to the museum back in 1990, it was nice to go back and see it all again. It is definitely worth the trip. The hubby enjoyed it as well.
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