1894 жылғы Миннесота штатындағы Ұлы Хинкли өрті

1894 forest fire in Minnesota, U. S.

NOTOC

The Great Hinckley Fire was a conflagration in the pine forests of the U. S. state of Minnesota in September 1894, which burned an area of at least (perhaps more than ), including the town of Hinckley. The official death count was 418; the actual number of fatalities was likely higher. Other sources put the death toll at 476.

The fire destroyed the town of Hinckley (which at the time had a population of over 1,400) as well as the smaller nearby settlements of Mission Creek, Brook Park, Sandstone, Miller, Partridge and Pokegama. An unknown number of Native Americans and backcountry dwellers were also killed in the fire; bodies continued to be found years later. It is second only to the 1918 Cloquet Fire (where 453 were killed) as the deadliest in Minnesota history, and the third deadliest in U. S. history, after the Peshtigo Fire.

Today, a 37 mile (60 km) section of the Willard Munger State Trail, from Hinckley to Barnum, is a memorial to the fire and the devastation it caused. In the town of Hinckley, on Highway 61, the Hinckley Fire Museum is located in the former Northern Pacific Railway depot. It is located a few feet north of the former depot, which burned down in the fire. It is open from May 1 until the end of October. Lutheran Memorial Cemetery in Hinckley has a historical marker and granite obelisk as a memorial to those who perished in the fire. 248 residents of Hinckley perished in the fire and are buried in a mass grave at this cemetery. Some are unidentified. The Brook Park Cemetery on County Road 126, south of Minnesota State Highway 23, has an historical marker plaque and a memorial to the 23 fire victims of Brook Park, with a tall obelisk on top of a granite marker.

Thomas P. "Boston" Corbett, the Union soldier who killed John Wilkes Booth after Booth's assassination of Abraham Lincoln, is presumed to have died in the fire. His last known residence is believed to have been a forest settlement near Hinckley, and a "Thomas Corbett" is listed as one of the dead or missing.