Qualla: Great Fire of 1901 https://qualla.com/great-fire-of-1901 en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Great Fire of 1901 https://qualla.com/great-fire-of-1901 Great Fire of 1901: Introduction https://qualla.com/great-fire-of-1901/ The workers at the Cleaveland Fibre Factory on the corner of Beaver and Davis Streets left for lunch around noon on Friday, May 3, 1901. They had no reason to hurry back. Minutes later, sparks from a nearby chimney drifted into a pile of Spanish moss laid out to dry in the factory yard. The moss caught. Workers grabbed buckets, as they had done on similar occasions before. This time the wind had other plans. A brisk gust fanned the small fire outward into a city built almost entirely of wood, baking under a prolonged drought, its shingled rooftops as dry as the moss that started it all. By the time the flames died, Jacksonville had suffered one of the worst disasters in Florida history and the third largest urban fire in the United States, behind only the Great Chicago Fire and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake fire.

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/m/u/great-fire-of-1901-wp/djmu-great-fire-of-1901-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Great Fire of 1901: Eight Hours of Ruin https://qualla.com/great-fire-of-1901/ Jacksonville in 1901 was a city of wooden buildings and wood-shingled roofs, and the drought had turned every surface into tinder. The fire moved east from the Cleaveland Fibre Factory with terrifying efficiency. Contemporary accounts said the flames spread from house to house "w...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/m/u/great-fire-of-1901-wp/djmu-great-fire-of-1901-eight-hours-of-ruin.mp3 0:06 2 full Great Fire of 1901: Martial Law and Ashes https://qualla.com/great-fire-of-1901/ Florida Governor William S. Jennings declared martial law and dispatched state militia units to restore order. Reconstruction began almost immediately, and civil authority was returned by May 17, just two weeks after the fire. The destruction was staggering. Block after block of ...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/m/u/great-fire-of-1901-wp/djmu-great-fire-of-1901-martial-law-and-ashes.mp3 0:06 3 full Great Fire of 1901: A City Redrawn by Prairie Light https://qualla.com/great-fire-of-1901/ From the ashes came an architect. Henry John Klutho arrived from New York and threw himself into rebuilding Jacksonville, drawing inspiration from the Prairie Style then being pioneered by Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago and the Midwest. Klutho and his contemporaries gave Jacksonvi...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/m/u/great-fire-of-1901-wp/djmu-great-fire-of-1901-a-city-redrawn-by-prairie-light.mp3 0:06 4 full Great Fire of 1901: The Fire's Long Shadow https://qualla.com/great-fire-of-1901/ The Great Fire of 1901 did not just reshape Jacksonville's skyline. It exposed the racial fault lines that ran through the city's foundations. Johnson's account of firefighters prioritizing white property over Black neighborhoods became part of the historical record, a documented...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/m/u/great-fire-of-1901-wp/djmu-great-fire-of-1901-the-fires-long-shadow.mp3 0:06 5 full