Note: This is the first of two articles about the Great Oakland Fire of 1898.

Oakland after the 1898 fire. Courtesy of the Garrett County Historical Society.

Robert Shirer woke up from a deep sleep the morning of July 12, 1898, when the sound of a whistle and church bell wouldn’t stop. When he opened his eyes, wondering what the reason for the noise was, he saw that his bed was on fire and some of his room. He jumped from his bed and ran out of the burning building with only his nightclothes on. It was a narrow escape that left him with slight burns.

Outside, it appeared as if all of Oakland was on fire.

I.L. Haught, a clerk at the Oakland Pharmacy, had been the first person to see the fire that morning. Like Shirer, he had been asleep, but he came awake much earlier than usual because of unusual noises. He sat up when he realized that he had been “aroused from his sleep by a roaring and creaking noise under his window and a flare of light in his room,” The (Oakland) Republican reported.

It was not yet 4 a.m. so it should have been dark and quiet outside. Haught walked to the window and saw that the saloon owned by James Reynolds had caught fire. The saloon abutted the building where his room was so it was only a matter of time before it caught fire, too.

Haught threw his pants and ran out into the street shouting, “Fire!”

Dr. Henry W. McComas was the first person to appear. He had been out of town for business reasons and had just arrived back at his office. More people soon roused, and someone blew the whistle at the electric light plant to sound the general alarm for Oakland. Another person rang to bell in the Lutheran Church to alert residents of the danger.

“This had the effect to arouse the whole town and in a remarkably short time hundreds of people were at work vainly striving to check the rapidly advancing flames and in saving goods from the burning buildings and those which were in danger of burning,” The Republican reported.

The roaring fire soon spread to the surrounding buildings – the Mountain Democrat Newspaper Building, the Offutt Building, and the Ravenscroft Building. Because of the parched conditions the area had been experiencing for the past month “these buildings burned like tinder and in a remarkably short time they were in ashes.” The newspaper reported.

From the Offutt Building, the fire jumped to a two-story frame building at the rear of the Garrett County bank and then to a new building owned by D. E. Offutt on Railroad Street. This building housed the law office of W. A. Daily, a confectionery store, and a home.

From the Ravenscroft Building, the fire jumped to an adjoining building that housed a general store, seamstress shop, tailor’s shop, jewelry store, and the home of Joseph Harned, who owned the general store.

“When the alarm sounded he and family were asleep and they had just time to escape from the building in the clothes they could grasp as they hurried from their rooms,” The Republican reported.

Their youngest son had rushed outside dressed only in his nightdress and wrapped in a blanket. Someone in the crowd saw the lone child and took him to a neighbor’s house. His mother, who had been out of her mind with fright because she thought that he hadn’t gotten out of the building, found him there later.

All the buildings on the south side of Second Street burned completely. The Republican reported that “when it was seen none of them could be saved from the fire willing hands were turned to the north side of that thoroughfare in the hope that by keeping the flames from the store building owned and occupied by Messrs. J. M. Davis & Son as a hardware establishment the greater portion of the business and resident part of the town could be saved.”

You might also enjoy these posts:

• Embarrassed wife has Oakland’s first doctor executed
• A coal town collapse, part 1
• Western Maryland Moonshining