A dairy cow, a lame cart driver, and a lying journalist: the mystery of the cause of the great Chicago fire

In October 1871, Chicago was the fourth largest city in the United States, housing more than 334,000 residents. The rapidly growing urban center featured over 60,000 buildings, approximately ninety percent of which were constructed entirely of wood, packed closely together alongside extensive infrastructure spanning hundreds of kilometers.

This dense wooden construction set the stage for a catastrophic disaster, commonly attributed in popular lore to a dairy cow, a limping wagon driver, and a fabricated journalistic account. The mysterious origins and actual causes of the Great Chicago Fire have since become a subject of historical examination, contrasting myth with the vulnerability of the nineteenth-century metropolis.