Peshtigo in 1871
The city of Peshtigo was a new and booming town. It was a lumber town on the Peshtigo River. There were close to 2000 citizens on both sides of the river.
Most of the people worked as farmers and lumberjacks. There were plenty of sawmills and the Peshtigo Company mill cut 5,690,384 board feet of lumber that year.
The Chicago and North Western railroad was on it's way from Green Bay. Peshtigo Harbor was the main port for supplies and immigrants coming to Peshtigo.
There was a new drug store and a new weekly newspaper called The Eagle. Peshtigo had a hardware store, general store and a grocery store. Some of the other stores were George Robinson's meat market, Harter and Horvath clothing store and an instrument store owned by J. F. Jaques. There was a physician, Dr. B. T. Phillips. There was a Congregational Church that just got a new white paint job. The minister was Reverend Edwin R. Beach.
Peshtigo city was made of wood. Before the fire on Saturday, right in the middle of the day, the wind suddenly stopped with out a single sign of a breeze. The people did not leave even though there was signs of the fire.