It was Friday, May 3, 1901, and not much was happening in Florida’s largest city, population 28,000. In fact, the news was achingly dull with a repeat weather report weeks old—hot and dry.
Reporters were in search of a story. By day’s end, the story of the century would be delivered to their doorstep.
Meanwhile, at the Cleaveland Fibre Factory, workers were taking a break for the noonday meal. The main part of the factory was a 200- foot-long elevated drying platform, where loads of Spanish moss were curing for use as mattress stuffing. Due to flammability of the moss, it was the custom to have a man on duty to watch for embers from the chimneys of nearby shanties. But this day, since there was no wind, the watchman went to lunch with his friends.
By the time the workers noticed that a pile of moss was on fire, the flames had already begun to spread across the platform. A nearby bucket of water should have sufficiently handled the blaze, but like a harbinger of what was to come, an easterly wind blew in unexpectedly. The wind-fueled flames whipped through the moss bed and into the pitch pine factory where more moss, along with bird feathers, horsehair, and cotton, erupted in a skyrocketing torrent of flames.
Jacksonville took the matter of firefighting seriously. Fire Chief Thomas W. Haney, the highest paid public servant in town with a salary double that of the mayor, was soon at the scene directing the men. As burning debris flew through the air and hoses pulsed water toward the factory, Haney turned and looked east. To his horror, flaming brands of moss were raining from the sky onto the rooftops below. The city was burning down behind him.
Fifteen thousand were in the burned district that day. As citizens made their hasty escapes, many felt death literally licking at their heels, Hundreds of trunks found their way into the streets, some painstakingly moved to other sites, only to meet a fiery doom blocks away. On the sidewalk of the state capital, the greeting was not the accustomed “good day;” instead, people were met with the frightening refrain, “Have you heard, Jacksonville is burning down?”
During the raging eight hour march, the inferno cut a path through the city nearly two miles west to east and one mile north to south, destroying 466 acres, leveling 2,368 buildings and homes, and miraculously leaving only seven dead. In eight hours, 146 city blocks were gone, along with every public building except the U.S. Post Office. The fire’s black clouds were seen in North Carolina. The glow in the sky was seen in Savannah and Miami. The federal government rushed thousands of tents to Jacksonville as the city still burned. Jacksonville smoldered for days.
It was the third largest metropolitan fire in U.S. history ranked only behind San Francisco and Chicago. But the city snapped back almost immediately. The relief effort directed by the city government, the Board of Trade, the churches and the women of the city was a finely tuned machine. Committees were in place immediately after the fire—feeding, clothing employing and transporting a city in shock.
The city’s worst disaster became its shining hour. The spirit of a new Jacksonville was born.