the powell marsh fire

Powell Marsh went up in flames in 1932, and Carl Christensen was on the scene. Not only did he fight to contain the fire, but he survived it in a pretty amazing fashion when he seemed likely to be engulfed in flames! Read on...

That summer, they had someone out on Powell Marsh and they was gonna heat up a cup of coffee or something. They made a fire out there and they started Powell Marsh on fire. That fire swept up to the Powell Road. We fought with as much as we could fight with to keep it from going across Powell Road because it would have got into Manitowish and wiped out everything. So the wind went down and the fire died out, which was lucky for us, but on the other side, into the marsh, it kept going.

Powell Marsh today: a rather nondescript photo courtesy of the DNR