families being established and homes being built. In the autumn of 1908, however, came the end of this promising beginning.

On 5 September 1908, a forest fire broke out not far from the city. Seeming to pose no threat at first, high winds and dry undergrowth whipped the fire into an inferno, centered about 4 miles from Chisholm. Smoke began to darken the sky over Chisholm, too, and although the situation was still not considered dangerous, men set out to fight the flames. Then burning branches and live coals were swept along by the high wind, and the danger to Chisholm itself soon became apparent. People ran back and forth, trying to save whatever they could of their property, and incidents recorded included the tragi-comic distress of it: an old woman seen carrying a bird cage as her most valued treasure, even though the bottom of the cage had fallen off and the bird had flown away; a Finnish couple saving their bed after much effort, but letting enough hoarded cash burn with their house to have bought them a dozen such beds. Lake Street was a picture of panic, with everyone trying to escape. Some sought refuge in the brick school house, others in the bank which was considered fireproof - but the next day the bank was but a gutted ruin and its safe so hot to the touch it could not be opened for three days. Only a few homes were saved, and they became centers for relief work as soon as a train with food and supplies arrived from Duluth.

Rebuilding began promptly, however, and by 1910 the population had grown by 25%%0, to a total of 7,684.

The Chisholm Temperance Society: As evidence that Finns arrived in Chisholm in considerable numbers at the very start of mining operations there, is the fact that the first local Finnish organization, a temperance society, was started in 1901. Although Oscar Pohjonen, who claimed he had been the society's first elected chairman, stated to Aaltio that the society was started in 1904, his memory apparently was faulty, for in 1901 four new societies were listed as joining the Temperance Brotherhood League, and one of them was the "Muisto society in Minnesota"; further, an article in the Raittiuskalenteri for 1904 states Muisto's founder to have been K. A. Staudinger of Hancock, Michigan, travelling in Minnesota to foster the temperance movement, and he was definitely in Chisholm on the day of President McKinley's funeral in September 1901, which presumably gave the reason for the name Muisto (Memory) being chosen for the new society; and finally, the 1904 Raittiuskalenteri, put to press in the autumn of 1903, included a photograph of the Muisto society's new hall, inaugurated that year.

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