From 1 to 1,000: The Fort Worth Fire Department

Today the Fort Worth Fire Department consists of a force of 1,000 serving a population of almost 900,000 distributed over 345 square miles. The department responds more than 100,000 times a year from forty-three stations in six battalions equipped with thirty-nine engines, six aircraft rescue vehicles, fifteen brush units, three water tankers, a hazmat rescue squad, etc.

Knock three zeroes off that “1,000,” and that’s how it all began on a cold night in 1873: with a force of one.

And who was that force of one?

Why, B. B. Paddock, of course.

Paddock, as editor and publisher of the Fort Worth Democrat and Cowtown’s biggest booster, had been urging, in vain, that the town establish a fire department.

In an era when most buildings were wooden and when people used fire to illuminate, heat, and cook, a fire department was much needed.

In fact, so common were fires across the country that in the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Democrat and later Paddock’s Fort Worth Gazette published a daily front-page roundup: “The Fire Record.”

As the story goes, in 1873 Paddock called a public meeting to organize a volunteer fire department. But on the night of the meeting a norther blew into town, and only Paddock braved the weather to show up to organize a fire department.

The Star-Telegram in 1909 wrote of Paddock: “It is therefore generally conceded that he is the original fire department of the city.”

Undaunted, this force of one kept campaigning, and after a public meeting at the courthouse in March 1873, on May 2—a month after the city incorporated—residents, cheered on by Paddock, established Fort Worth Hook and Ladder Company No. 1 with a membership of about sixty. The company was soon renamed for Middleton Tate Johnson.

At the meeting Paddock was elected secretary of the new fire company. In reporting the meeting in the Democrat Paddock gleefully got in a poke at Dallas.

Because the volunteer department received little funding from the city, members donated their own money to buy firefighting equipment. The department and residents also held benefits—dances, raffles, ice cream socials—to raise money for the department.

Many of the firemen were property owners, who had a vested interest in a fire department that might one day save their buildings and belongings. But before the golden age of fraternal lodges, civic service organizations such as fire departments also were a form of social networking.

Firemen were highly esteemed as hometown heroes. People cheered as the men marched down Main Street to show off their newest firefighting equipment, as they marched in parades with their spiffy uniforms and equipment with shiny brass fittings.

Among members of the volunteer fire department was Jim Courtright, who was elected foreman of M. T. Johnson Hook and Ladder Company No. 1 in 1881.

Three months after its founding the company showed off its new hook and ladder truck, rolling it down Main Street. In those days before the the railroad arrived, the men of the company had pulled the truck from the railhead in Dallas to Fort Worth!

And that’s how the hook and ladder truck got to fires: It was pulled by men, not horses. The truck was really just a wagon that carried grappling hooks and ladders.

The ladders were used to rescue people from a burning building. The hooks were used to pull down a building. Without an adequate way to deliver water onto a fire, the strategy often was not to extinguish a fire but rather to prevent the fire from spreading by depriving it of “food”: Firemen used grappling hooks and ropes to pull down a burning structure to separate fire from unburned building.

A hook and ladder truck also carried leather buckets that could be filled from a well or horse trough and delivered to a fire by a hand-to-hand bucket brigade. Firemen also used hand pumps to put water onto a fire.

The hook and ladder truck was housed in the city’ first fire hall, a simple wooden building at Weatherford and Throckmorton streets.

But hook and ladder trucks, leather buckets, and hand pumps were not adequate ways to fight a fire.

Three years later, in 1876, two major fires caused Fort Worth to update its firefighting equipment.

In March the courthouse burned. (Courthouse fires have seemed almost obligatory in the history of Texas counties. Texas recorded fifty-three courthouse fires between 1849 and 1967.)

And in September 1876 a fire at Main and 3rd streets destroyed a row of three two-story wooden buildings. The hook and ladder company could do little.

The next month the department ordered a Silsby steam engine costing $6,250 ($154,000 today).

A new company was organized to operate the engine: Panther Steam Engine Company No. 1. M. B. Loyd was elected first president of the new company. The new engine also was named “Panther.”

One member of Panther Company was deputy city marshal Christopher Columbus Fitzgerald, who would be killed in the line of duty in 1877.

Soon Panther Company had a mascot: a panther cub named “Billy.” Not surprisingly, the caged wild animal soon turned “cross and ugly.”

A steam engine fought fire with fire: Fire under its boiler produced steam to power a pump that delivered water from a source—a water wagon or cistern—onto a fire. In November 1876 the new engine was publicly tested. After a fire was started under the boiler, the engine’s whistle blew in four minutes to indicate that the engine had steam. The engine pumped a stream of water two hundred feet from a hose.

Firemen were accustomed to pulling their hook and ladder truck to fires. But the steam pumper was a different matter. It weighed four tons. After a few embarrassing attempts to pull the coal-eating beast, the firemen gave up. The city began renting horses to pull the engine: ten dollars per fire.

To feed the thirsty engine, the city in 1877 ordered three fire cisterns to be dug downtown.

Also in 1877 the city bought a fire bell and installed it in the new city hall. The fire department would indicate the location of a fire—by ward—by chiming the bell a certain number of times. The city at that time had three wards.

This 1885 map shows the city’s third fire hall (1877) at Rusk (Commerce) and 2nd streets, which also housed city hall and the city jail.

The 1877 fire hall/city hall/calaboose was replaced in 1907 by fire hall no. 1, which still stands (as a Starbucks pickup counter). (Black and white photo from University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Jack White Photo Collection.)

By 1878 the fire department had about 125 members in two companies.

Cisterns were the main source of water for firemen until 1882, when the city installed a waterworks system with water mains and hydrants.

The city continued to rent horses to pull the engine until 1878, when the city purchased its first team of horses for $427.

In 1882 the fire department installed an electric fire alarm system with eleven alarm boxes.

Also in 1882 the city administration of Mayor John Peter Smith bought a three thousand-pound bronze fire bell. The new bell’s first home was the 1883 wooden central fire station at 1206 Main Street.

Today the bell is on display at the central fire station (Hedrick, 1930).

In this 1885 map showing the 1877 fire hall/city hall/calaboose, note the five hundred-barrel fire cistern and fire alarm box in the lower left and a double hydrant (“DHyd.”) in the upper right.

Then came 1890 and the Texas Spring Palace fire. The fire station on Main Street was less than ten blocks away, but the fire spread so quickly that by the time firemen arrived they could douse only the charred rubble.

Journalists of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper were touring the South in a special railroad car and happened to be covering the Texas Spring Palace exhibition that night. A Leslie’s artist captured this scene from the railroad car parked on a siding.

Just as the great South Side fire would in 1909, the Texas Spring Palace fire would lead to changes in Fort Worth firefighting. In 1891 the department bought its first aerial hook and ladder, in 1892 its first chemical engine.

Note that by 1892 the fire department had six companies who could respond to fire alarm boxes placed all over town. Firemen included one-armed George Craig and Ben L. Waggoman.

Fire Chief Ben U. Bell in April 1893 reported that his department had two hundred volunteers, one aerial truck, two steam engines, three hose reels, one hose wagon, one combination chemical engine and hose wagon, seventeen horses, and 4,800 feet of rubber hose.

Chief Bell kept detailed records. For example, he reported that in the previous year a total of 2,716 firemen worked 102 hours, traveled 607 miles, laid 117,050 feet of hose, and raised 1,050 feet of ladders in responding to 141 fire alarms for a variety of causes, including one triggered by the “flashing red light in secret organization.”

Total losses of buildings and contents: $117,760 ($3.4 million today).
Total amount of buildings and contents saved: $290,440 ($8.4 million today).

But for all his detailed recordkeeping, Ben U. Bell would be the last chief of Fort Worth’s volunteer fire department.

In late 1893 came another major change: The volunteer fire department became a fully financed and staffed part of the city. The new department consisted of thirty-four men in four companies.

The Gazette published sketches of the leaders of the reorganized department, including Chief John C. Cella and a future chief, William Bideker (upper left).

Fast-forward to 1899. The year was a big one for Fort Worth: new T&P passenger depot, new Union Depot, new city hall, and new central fire station (shown) on Throckmorton Street. (Photo from Bob Patterson.)

The men and horses of the paid fire department, like those of the volunteer fire department, would have their hands and hooves full as one century ended and another began, fighting fires such as these in the next twelve years:

1896, 1882 T&P passenger depot
1904, 1899 T&P passenger depot
1904, Fifth Ward school and Missouri Avenue Methodist Church
1908, 1902 T&P freight depot
1909, South Side
1910, 1891 Fort Worth High School
1911, stockyards

Related posts:
Neither Fist nor Fire Held Fear for Canada Bill
In the Line of Duty (Part 2): The Technology Changes; the Danger Doesn’t
“Always Willing to Work”: The Death of a Volunteer
“Where’s the Fire?” Just Follow Bill Bideker
The Man Who Taught Kids to Stop, Drop, and Roll
Cowtown Yoostabes, 3-Alarm Edition: Fire Halls

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3 Responses to From 1 to 1,000: The Fort Worth Fire Department

  1. Matt says:

    Fantastic work! I feel privileged to be part of this historic fire dept. Many thanks for your time and effort in putting this together.

  2. Sharon S Rios says:

    Wonderful history, as usual, but what the what was “flashing red light in secret organization.”?

    • hometown says:

      Beats me, Sharon. I guess that will remain one of Fort Worth history’s many mysteries. A “secret organization” probably was a fraternal lodge.

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