What is Great Chicago Fire?
[[File:Chicago-fire1.jpg|thumb|300px|Drawing of the Great Chicago Fire from ''Harper's Weekly'']] The '''Great Chicago Fire''' was a large fire that started on Sunday October 8, 1871 in [[Chicago]], [[Illinois]], [[United States]]. The fire started out as nine separated fires.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/3710.html|title=Progress of the Chicago Fire of 1871|publisher=Encyclopedia of Chicago|accessdate=August 28, 2014}}</ref> It burned until Tuesday October 10, 1871 when rain started to fall. The fire destroyed {{convert|3.3|mi2|abbr=off|sp=us}}<ref>{{cite book|last=Miller|first=Donald|title=City of the Century; The Epic of Chicago and the making of America|url=https://archive.org/details/cityofcentury00dona|year=1996|publisher=Simon & Schuster|location=New York|isbn=0684831384|page=[https://archive.org/details/cityofcentury00dona/page/159 159]}}</ref> and $192,000,000 in property. About 100,000 people were left [[homeless]]. Three hundred people died. Because of a large fire the night before, firefighters were too tired to quickly put out these fires.<ref>Chicago fire of 1871. (2014). In ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.</ref> No one is sure what caused the fire. A [[legend]] says that it started when a cow knocked over a [[lantern]] in Catherine O'Leary's [[barn]] on De Koven Street.<ref>[http://www.thechicagofire.com/ Did the Cow Do It?]</ref> The oldest structure left standing in the area where the fire burned is the Couch family [[tomb]]. This stone tomb was built in 1858.<ref>[http://hiddentruths.northwestern.edu/couch_main.html Couch Family Tomb]</ref> Not all of the city was destroyed. Important places like the Stock Yards, where animals were slaughtered, were not damaged. Neither was the railroad system.<ref>The Ruined City. (2011). [http://www.greatchicagofire.org/ruined-city The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140528112909/http://www.greatchicagofire.org/ruined-city |date=2014-05-28 }} Chicago History M