On This Date in Minnesota History: October 7

October 7, 1910 - A fire that had already consumed the communities of Williams, Cedar Spur, and Graceton three days earlier approached Baudette and Spooner [Lake of the Woods County, Minn.] during the evening hours. “As the towns rapidly became furnaces of flames; citizens gathered at the depot for safety. Victims of a typhoid epidemic were evacuated by train before a whirlwind of flame swept away the two towns and the bridge over the Baudette River that connected them. Before morning almost everything at Baudette was leveled, leaving what one survivor called "a desolate plain" covered by charred ruins. Only the sawmill at Spooner remained standing. Forty-two persons lost their lives in the Great Fire of 1910. About 300,000 acres were burned in ten townships, including much valuable timber and many homesteads and livestock.”

http://www3.gendisasters.com/minnesota/3532/baudette-spooner,-mn-great-fire-1910

http://www.lakeofthewoodshistoricalsociety.com/history7.html