The Paris Fire, 1916

Neville's 1937 county history records how Paris paid for its recovery. A relief committee collected about $20,000 from citizens, and gifts from elsewhere brought the total to about $40,000, with roughly half spent on people who had lost everything. Red Cross and army relief experts guessed $90,000 to $120,000 would be needed, but Mayor Ed McCuistion had put hundreds of men to work clearing streets, and most people needed aid for about a week. Money left over later went to other disasters, including $1,000 for Halifax, and the legislature remitted state taxes to the county for five years.

What the plaque says

The Paris Fire, 1916 Although Paris was founded in the mid-1840s, many of its historic structures were lost in a fire that destroyed almost half the town in 1916. The blaze started about five o'clock on the afternoon of March 21, 1916, at the S. J. Long Warehouse near the southwest city limits. Its cause is unknown, but one theory is that a spark from a switch engine ignited dry grass near the warehouse. Winds estimated at 50 miles per hour soon blew the fire out of control as it burned a funnel-shaped path to the northeast edge of Paris. Firemen from Bonham, Cooper, Dallas, Honey Grove, and Hugo, Okla., helped the Paris Fire Department battle the flames, which were visible up to 40 miles away. The blaze destroyed most of the central business district and swept through a residential area before it was controlled at about sunrise on March 22. Property damage from the fire was estimated at $11,000,000. The structures burned included the Federal Building and post office, Lamar County Courthouse and Jail, City Hall, most commercial buildings, and several churches. Rebuilding was begun quickly as townspeople collected relief funds and opened their homes to the victims. A railroad and market center before the disaster, Paris soon regained its former prosperity. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 0.5 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 1.2 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Eiffel Tower — 2.4 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 22 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Lamar County, C. S. A. — steps away
• Paris Fire Department — steps away
• Robert Cooke Buckner — steps away
• Paris — steps away