August 31, 1894
For more than a week a fire has been raging on Stissing Mountain. It commenced a short distance north of Stissing and progressed northward until it reached a point nearly opposite Frank Eno’s Broad Valley Farm. Several hundred acres have been burned over and a great amount of valuable timber has been destroyed. C.H. Thomas had to make a desperate fight to save stacks of hay in meadows at the foot of the mountain. F.B. Wilbur lost some of his fence and saved some by desperate work. Efforts to extinguish the fire are about useless. Unless there is a rain soon the whole mountain may be burned over. If it crosses the “notch” and gets on Little Stissing there will be a close call for some houses and barns. The flames have been seen by night and the smoke by day by the residents of the village for a week, and when the wind was south, the smoke was all around us. The fire is said to have been started by a spark from a locomotive on the bridge road. Monday the fire took a turn to the west and went to the other side of the ridge and could no longer be seen from the east side. On Wednesday, at a point considerably farther north the fire again worked to the east, and in the evening was visible from the village.