Two days before Christmas in 1904, downtown Sioux City was filled with holiday shoppers.
Inside Pelletier’s Department Store at Fourth and Jackson Streets, the basement had been decorated for Christmas. Mechanical toys were surrounded by paper decorations and fluffy white cotton arranged to look like snow.
It must have looked magical.
Then someone struck a match.
One Tiny Spark
A salesman was preparing to demonstrate a small steam-powered toy.
When he struck the match, the burning head flew loose and landed in the cotton “snow.”
The cotton caught fire almost immediately.
Flames climbed into the paper decorations and spread through the basement before the Christmas shoppers around the display could fully react.
Fire Chief George Kelly happened to be nearby and spotted smoke coming from the store. He quickly sounded the alarm.
But the fire was already getting away from them.
The Fire Spreads Through Downtown Sioux City
The flames spread into the six-story Massachusetts Building.
Then they crossed Jackson Street to the Toy Building and moved into the Prugh Block and the Leader Hotel.
A strong wind made matters worse.
More than forty families—about 200 people—lived in the Massachusetts Block and were left homeless.
Sioux City’s firefighters needed help.
Crews and equipment were summoned from Council Bluffs and Omaha, with assistance traveling toward Sioux City by special train.
The fire burned through the night and into Christmas Eve morning.
By the time it was over, approximately two and a half downtown blocks had been destroyed.
One Tragic Death
Considering the size of the disaster, one detail is remarkable.
There was only one known fatality.
A man trapped in a fourth-floor apartment attempted to jump into a firemen’s life net below. On the way down, he struck a telephone cable, which knocked him away from the net.
He died on the pavement.
One life lost in a fire that devastated several of Sioux City’s major downtown buildings.
And It Started With Christmas “Snow”
That’s the detail I keep coming back to.
A match.
A toy.
A pile of cotton meant to look like snow.
Christmas decorations that were supposed to delight shoppers instead helped feed a fire that became one of the worst property disasters in Sioux City history.
The Sioux City Public Museum dates the start of the Pelletier Fire to the evening of December 23, 1904. The ruins continued burning into Christmas Eve. Our research found that an older 1942 Woodbury County history gave December 24 as the date, apparently because the fire continued into that morning.
More than 120 years later, downtown Sioux City looks nothing like it did that Christmas.
But once you know the story, it’s hard to imagine Fourth and Jackson without picturing that December night.
That’s what I love about local history.
Sometimes an ordinary street corner is holding a story no one would ever guess was there.
Find this story and many more in Woodbury County, Iowa: Strange But True — Nora Bramwell
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