The key moment in the 1886 fire that destroyed downtown Salisbury came seven years before the first spark.
In 1879 a waterfront business called Jackson’s Mill caught fire—and that blaze looked at first to be a dicey situation. Salisbury didn’t have a “modern” fire department (in the late 1800s sense of that term) at this point, so an old-fashioned bucket brigade went to work. Meanwhile, city officials sent telegrams seeking emergency help from other towns. The answer to that call came from Wilmington, Del., 100 miles away. Trains back then could cover that kind of distance faster than horses and wagons could travel 20 or 30 miles on rutted roads.
Wilmington had a state-of-the-art fire department. Their steamer engines raced towards the blaze atop wagon pulled by teams of impeccably trained horses. Wheeled reels of hose were not far behind. The Wilmington men dropped one end of a hose in the river, then used steam power to suck water out the other end onto the fire.
Thanks to those “Wilmington boys,” that 1879 fire turned out to be a minor event. But it made a big impression nonetheless on the people of Salisbury. Awestruck over the sight of modern firefighting gear, they rounded up money and bought themselves a Silsby steamer and some hose reels. They assembled local volunteers into a makeshift firefighting unit.
The Steamer That Didn’t Steam
Fast forward to Oct. 17, 1886. Fire broke out that Sunday evening at Toadvine’s Livery Stable on Dock Street (now Market Street). The place was empty. No one ever found out what caused the blaze. The alarm sounded. People came running.
And what they did was … nothing.
This is the horrible irony about the great Salisbury fire. If those people had leaped into action and formed an old-fashioned bucket brigade, they might have stopped the fire before it got out of control. Instead, they stood around and waited for the town’s fancy new firefighting machine to arrive.
It did arrive, and that volunteer firefighting team dropped one end of a hose in the river and got everything else in place. One of them turned the crank to start the steamer. Nothing happened.
Again with the crank. Nothing.
And again with the crank. Nothing.
And yet again with the crank. Nothing.
Courthouse standing rear left after the fire (Salisbury Fire Dept.)
Salisbury’s firefighting team had professional equipment, but they hadn’t maintained it in a professional manner. Best practices with Silsby steamers involved starting the engine once a week and lubricating valves and other parts regularly.
The fire took off. Salisbury hadn’t seen any real rain in a long time. Everything was dry and combustible. A strong breeze ran out of the southeast for a while, then switched to coming out of the southwest—and this one-two punch drove flames straight into the heart of the central business district.
Emergency telegrams went out. A reporter for the Baltimore Sun described the situation this way:
The scene during the fire beggars description. Children paralyzed with fright were screaming in mother’s arms … as wagons, carts, carriages, and every conceivable vehicle were brought into use trying to haul away what could be saved.
Post-fire view from Camden Street (Nabb Center for Delmarva History)
Runaway horses were a problem Looting was a problem. Then came explosions, as barrels of gunpowder, oil, and whiskey went up. The light of the fire at its peak was visible from Dover, Del., 55 miles away.
The out-of-town help got delayed. Crisfield, Md. had a firefighting steamer, but there was no railroad engine in town when the telegram arrived. They ordered one from Delmar. The fire department in Wilmington took off promptly, only to run into a broken signal box at Dover that needed repairs.
At long last, 70 Wilmington firefighters leaped off a train and raced down Church Street with their steamers and their hoses. The exhausted and terrified locals who lined both sides of the street cheered wildly. The Crisfield team was on the scene as well.
The “Wilmington boys” and those Crisfield heroes saved the Wicomico County Courthouse. That’s the most prominent pre-fire building standing in downtown Salisbury today. The Wilmington boys also managed to get Salisbury’s broken-down steamer running again by oiling up some valves. A small fleet of steamers kept pouring water until 9pm Monday, 26 hours after the blaze began. An image of the thank-you card the city of Salisbury sent out shortly after the blaze is on on display today on the website of the Crisfield fire company.
More than 150 buildings were destroyed across 22 acres stretching from the bridge at Camden Avenue up to North Division Street. Two hotels, 55 stores, 58 homes … the list goes on and on. Damage was estimated at $1 million, or more than $30 million in today’s dollars. Only half of the loss was insured.
Silver lining: No one died.
Modern Salisbury on the Rise
Silsby Steamer Wagon
The next morning, the people of Salisbury served those out-of-town firefighters a hearty breakfast. From the Wilmington News Journal:
Although there was little [food] left in the town to eat [by this time] the townspeople seemed to say to the visiting firefighters, “Here, you take it.”
Local historians regard the fire of 1886 as a turning point in the history of Salisbury. A modest country town before the fire, it became a thriving modern city when it rebuilt.
That transition began before the ashes stopped smoking. Civic leaders convened a big civic meeting on Tuesday, the day after the fire stopped burning. All eyes looked to the future. Streets would be widened. Fire safety protocols would be established. The fire department would be professionalized. (When they hired a chief, the man came from … you guessed it … Wilmington.
Wicomico County Courthouse today (Wikimedia)
Businesses reopened almost immediately, selling stuff out of makeshift tents and quickly built shanties. The Baltimore Sun, Oct. 20:
The people are going to work with a will to bring up Salisbury, phoenix-life, from the ashes, grander than it ever was before.
By spring of 1887, the Morning News in Wilmington, Del. was serving up this news under the headline “Good News from the Burned Town:”
Everything is booming here. The streets are full of busy men and boys, and the work of rebuilding the burned district is going forward with a bound. … It now looks as if the great fire will result in a big blessing to the town, as the streets have been widened and many improvements made.
Modern Salisbury was on the rise. The next potentially catastrophic fire arrived in 1899. The Silsby steamer performed perfectly, running for 28 straight hours and keeping that fire from becoming a big conflagration.
–posted in October 2025 by Jim Duffy for Secrets of the Eastern Shore/Whimbrel Creations LLC. All rights reserved. Thank you so much for spending time with this story!
AFTERNOTES:
After the fire (Maryland State Archives)
#1: Safe Keeping
Farrel & Co. was a Salisbury-based business that made a brand of fire-proof safe called Champion. Their ace marketing department went into overdrive after the 1886 Salisbury fire, collecting testimonials from all of the businesses—hotels, law firms, banks—whose records had survived the fire in Champion safes. Farrel used those quotes in ads that ran for many months in newspapers all over the Mid-Atlantic region.
#2: The Railroad Window
Salisbury received lots of help after the fire from pretty much every imaginable corner. One example: The New York, Philadelphia & Norfolk Railroad provided from transportation for the masonry used in the construction of a new Asbury United Methodist Church. The church commissioned a stained-glass window in the railroad company’s honor. Salisbury University student Jim Hudson wrote a thesis about the railroad in Salisbury for his history degree in the 1990s:
This is believed to be the only church window ever dedicated to a railroad. Although the congregation has since moved to a new building, the window moved with them and can still be seen today.
