18
Wednesday, December 27, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Ed O’Farrell’s
midnight ride
On a recent research trip
into the Nevada outback,
Nugget editor Jim Cornelius
and I had occasion to stop
for a few minutes in Silver
Lake, to pay our respects
at a monument in the local
cemetery. Ten feet high,
unprepossessing, the monu-
ment was erected in 1898,
to remember the victims of
Oregon’s deadliest fire.
The Silver Lake Fire of
1894 isn’t really the stuff
of a Christmas column,
except that in the midst of
an agonizing tragedy there
were also towering acts of
selflessness.
For the 200 or so people
who gathered in the J.H.
Clayton Hall — a community
room built above Chrisman
Brother’s Mercantile — it
was a chance to get out of
the minus-20-degree cold.
It was also Christmas Eve,
and after weeks of antici-
pation, finally time to cel-
ebrate “The Christmas Tree
Program” with family and
friends who had come in
buggies, wagons, and on
horseback from ranches and
homesteads as far away as
Paisley.
Silver Lake was then
not much bigger than it is
now, and in 1894 it was
the only established trading
post between Prineville and
Lakeview.
The community hall,
which had been used for
dances, theater programs,
and the occasional foot-
stomping lecture by wander-
ing evangelists, was deco-
rated with a large Christmas
tree. The tree was piled up
with presents, and the walls
were decorated with paper
chains and pine branches.
At one end of the hall there
was a small stage for the
choir, and the guests were
seated, shoulder-to-shoulder,
on an assortment of planks,
benches, boxes, and the
occasional chair.
The celebration was
almost at an end, the choir
wrapping up its last song
of the night, when George
Payne, 18, stood up from
his seat and tried navigat-
ing through the crowd by
walking along the edge of a
bench. Focused on keeping
his balance, George cracked
his head on a Rochester
lamp hung from the ceiling,
“causing it to slosh coal oil
into the burner and flare and
flame inside.”
The inferno that followed
would cost the lives of 43
people.
There were plenty
of heroic efforts among
the general panic that
night. There was Francis
Chrisman, who grabbed the
burning lamp with his bare
hands. It was a heroic move
that ended poorly when
people began batting at the
fireball, causing Chrisman
to drop the lantern — where
it was kicked away in the
stampede.
Burning oil then spread
in all directions, and caught
a young woman’s dress on
fire.
T h e r e w a s Wa l t e r
Duncan, who climbed out
onto the porch roof and
handed some 20 people
down into the street and
safety. And there was John
Buick, who carried his infant
daughter, and young son
Frank, through the flames.
For many, there was no
way out at all. Built above
the mercantile, the Clayton
Hall had only one exit, at the
bottom of a narrow corri-
dor, with a door that opened
into the crowd that was now
pressing down the stairs. But
for Lucinda Schroeder, who
had initially escaped the fire
and who returned to search
for her husband and son,
nearly 100 more people may
have died. She stood block-
ing the door open with her
body so that others could
escape.
We Respond
when you call us.
Your local Sisters contractor for:
Earthwork - Utilities - Grading
Rock Walls - Snow Removal
Residential & Commercial
Both Schroeder and her
son would perish in the
flames.
After George Payne’s
head struck the lamp it took
only two minutes for the
entire building to go up in
flames. Outside, “water was
pumped on those stumbling
out of the building with their
clothes aflame, until the
hose rig jammed. Then the
stairs, heavy with people,
collapsed.”
And there was Ed
O’Farrell, a young buckaroo,
who climbed on his horse
and set out across the desert,
in the middle of the night,
to fetch the closest doctor.
Anyone who has done any
serious riding in that kind of
cold, at night, can appreciate
the magnitude of this feat,
and we are left to wonder
what he might have been
thinking as he started out
into the miles of snow and
ice with an inferno raging in
the winter darkness over his
shoulder.
The physician, a Mr.
Bernard Daly, was in
Lakeview, 100 miles away.
But O’Farrell rode
through, changing horses
at ranches along the way,
and arranging a relay of
fresh mounts for the return
trip. He finally arrived in
Lakeview on the afternoon
of Christmas day, some 15
hours after setting out.
When Dr. Daly arrived
in Silver Lake, early on
December 26, “every house
in the village had been
turned into a hospital.”
Among the dead were 19
women and eight children.
For days afterward, citi-
zens of the Oregon outback
www.banr.net
scott@banr.net
ccb#165122
The memorial to the victims of the Silver Lake Fire of 1894 stands in the
lonely cemetery at Silver Lake to this day.
continued to arrive in Silver
Lake, to lend whatever hand
they could in the wake of
unimaginable horrors.
The monument in Silver
Lake is a grim, grey thing.
And it was a grim, grey day
when Jim and I parked on the
side of the road to explore
and behold it. And as we set
out again, heading east into
even deeper reaches of des-
ert history, I could not stop
thinking about Ed O’Farrell.
I could not stop hear-
ing the creak of cold saddle
leather as he rode, or stop
feeling the bitter, burning
frost in his fingers and toes.
I could not stop hearing his
horse, laboring to punch
through mile after mile of
crusted snow and ice. And
I could not stop admiring
the size of a man’s heart,
who would continue in that
way, long after the warm
and terrible fireglow had
been subsumed, when even
time finally froze and night
rushed into the void like the
hardest dark.
HOLIDAY Artists! Have a class
CLEAN-UP
you’re teaching?
Carpet
Cleaner
Get that information into the community
via the Nugget’s Classes & Training
classifi ed ad category! It’s a great value:
Just $2 per line the fi rst week,
$1.50 per line on repeat weeks. And
it goes online at no extra charge!
Placement deadline is Monday before noon,
at 541-549-9941 or nuggetnews.com.
Shop Vac
Storage
Boxes
NEED IT, RENT IT!
ls
Paste ss
Cla
days
Satur .m.
p
3
1 to
Banr Enterprises, llc
541-549-6977
PHOTO BY CRAIG RULLMAN
506 N. Pine St.
541-549-9631
Sales • Service
Rentals • Accessories
www.sistersrental.com
Wat
er
Clas color
s
6 t
Thu o 8 p.m
.
rsd
ays