Today, September 16, is the 100th Anniversary of the Great White Horse Fire…the massive fire that lead to the organization of the Salisbury Township Fire Company #1…
“On September 16, 1913, Mrs. Mason Axe saw children coming out of Harry Sweigart’s Barn, saw flames licking up from the roof and sounded the alarm. The neighborhood rallied with bucket brigades, but to everyone’s frustration and horror the strong south east wind carried the enormous sparks 500 feet west and across Route 340 to the barn of the White Horse Inn.
Calls for help went to the fire companies in Gap, Intercourse, Blue Ball, New Holland, and Terre Hill. Only Intercourse and Gap performed active service; the other companies arrived too late to be of assistance. J.T. Sellers loaded the Gap pumper on his Ford truck and took off for White Horse. Gap also followed with two more engines.
The prolonged dry weather, the southeast wind, and frame construction causes 3 houses, 7 barns, a carriage house, and some straw stacks to burn in a few short hours.
The scratch of a match in one second changed, in a few hours, the course of the citizens’ lives in the tiny village of White Horse. Many carried insurance while others did not. What did not change was the sense of hard work and neighborliness that characterized the fighting of the fire and the immediate rebuilding of their lives.”
-from the book “A History of Salisbury Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania” by Mrs. Joan Lorenz (2002).
This is the first of several articles that will be placed on our website commemorating our 100th Anniversary on 2014.