Episode 2 of 3
The Great Thumb Fire
- When
- September 5, 1881
- Where
- Thumb area
On September 5, 1881, a massive fire burned over a million acres in Michigan's Thumb region, killing 282 people.
The fire, fueled by drought, hurricane-force winds, and logging residues, burned over a million acres in less than a day. It killed 282 people in Sanilac, Lapeer, Tuscola, and Huron counties. The damage estimate was $2,347,000, equivalent to $78,300,776 in modern currency.
Sources
- Thumb Fire Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-19
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.