{"id":2492,"date":"2026-03-28T11:45:57","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T16:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=2492"},"modified":"2026-03-28T11:46:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T16:46:35","slug":"the-big-vail-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=2492","title":{"rendered":"The big Vail fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It was one of the strangest experiences in my life. I awoke for no obvious reason. Looking toward the window, I managed to believe that I ended up in the middle of the sun. The sky was the brightest orange anyone could imagine.<\/p>\n

At once, it dawned on me. There\u2019s a fire nearby, and it\u2019s snowing. I got out of bed, put on my blue jeans, socks, grabbed my boots, coat, and hat and headed outside. The snow was blinding, and it seemed like the snow was bleeding.<\/p>\n

I headed toward downtown. Yes! I spotted the fire. I think sirens helped me locate the source. I watched the firefight from any angle I could get. The Main Street was filled with hoses. Men shouting; ice developing on anything and everything. As much as I wanted to, I dared not ask anyone a question. We all knew what was going on. Like Rome; Vail was burning. But unlike Rome, it was burning in the middle of a raging blizzard. In the end, the fire consumed the weekly newspaper office, an empty building, a lawyer\u2019s office (where the fire started), a bar and a bank.<\/p>\n

Obviously, because of the blizzard, there was no school the following day, so I headed back downtown. The only thing I remember about the that day was running into Art Adams, who told me that he came to town to see if money in the bank\u2019s vault burned.<\/p>\n

On the Sunday after the big downtown fire, a few of us Marauders walked around the red picket snow fence to examine the remains of the fire. As with most Sundays in downtown Vail, there were no pedestrians, and very little vehicle traffic. The brick walls where the Lincoln Club used to be were now lying on the ground, and beer cans were mixed in with the red bricks and ash.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long to realize that some of the beer cans scattered throughout the debris were full. Most were Schlitz. The cans may have been slightly brown or black in a few places, but the cans that were full became salvage to us. We collected as many of the undamaged (but slightly singed) cans as we could and stashed them somewhere where my memory fails me.<\/p>\n

However, the Sunday after accumulating damaged cans, we had a party at the McCoid\u2019s home. We put ice in glasses and cups and poured the beer into the odd assortment of containers. We were having a blast until someone yelled: \u201cThey\u2019re home!\u201d That would have been Dale and Helen McCoid pulling up around back. Kids were trying to squeeze out of the front door so fast I\u2019m not sure that a few were temporarily stuck.<\/p>\n

Vail Boys! We were quick to open the door when opportunity knocked. Even after the doors burned down.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

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It was one of the strangest experiences in my life. I awoke for no obvious reason. Looking toward the window, I managed to believe that I ended up in the middle of the sun. The sky was the brightest orange … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1384,1382,1383,801,1138],"class_list":["post-2492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art-adams","tag-dale-mccoid","tag-helen-mccoid","tag-vail-iowa","tag-vail-marauders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2493,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492\/revisions\/2493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}