The Great Chicago Fire started the night of October 8, 1871 in a barn near what is now the intersection of Roosevelt Road and Canal Street. The blaze lasted for two days, killing roughly 300 people and flat out destroying 3.3 square miles of the city. Despite the horrible and tragic event, it did give Chicago the opportunity to rise up and transform itself into a modern industrial giant.
The exact source of the fire has never been officially determined. Most Chicago natives will tell you that it started when Catherine O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern while being milked in the family's barn at 137 DeKoven Street. O'Leary quickly turned into the scapegoat for one of the biggest American disasters of the 19th century. She even became the subject of an eery children's song:
Late one night, when we were all in bed,
Old Mother Leary left a lantern in the shed;
And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said,
"There'll be a hot time in the old town, tonight."
O'Leary has been exonerated of any blame several times since the embers of the fire cooled. She was cleared by a commission in 1871 and was proclaimed innocent by the City Council in 1997. In that City Council meeting, aldermen cheekily deflected suspicion to the mysterious Daniel "Peg Leg" Sullivan, who claimed to be the first at the scene.
O'Leary said she had been in bed when the fire started, and that she never milked the cow at night. While her barn was one of the first structures to light up on that dry night 144 years ago, there's no clear cut evidence that it was the first. Even more, 40 years after the fire former Chicago Republican reporter Michael Ahern bragged to the Chicago Tribune that he had made up the O'Leary story. Some have speculated that anti-Irish sentiments had something to do with the haste in which O'Leary and her cow were thrust into public scorn.
Had she known what the fire would inevitably do for Chicago, O'Leary might have taken some credit for getting it going. After all, today's Chicago might be more like Cleveland if it wasn't for that fateful night in 1871, a night that radically changed the history of the city.