On an afternoon of extreme high temperatures, a devastating fire struck the small town of Dallas, Texas. Most of the center of the town swiftly burned to the ground and damage was estimated a highly as $300,000. On the same day, in other places in Denton County, in Denton and Pilot Point, similar fires struck. The cause in all these fires was probably the "tinder box" conditions of wooden buildings but the simultaneous outbreaks began the "Texas Slave Insurrection Panic" among whites that cost the lives of scores of African American in Texas in the following weeks. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Kent Biffle, A Month of Sundays (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 1993), 56.
"Great Fire in Texas," New York Times, July 23, 1860.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Crime/Disasters