The city of Ambrose, North Dakota “...had [a] narrow escape from disaster” on this day in 1916, as the city’s pharmacy was set alight by an unknown arsonist. The arson was believed to be an attempt to create a terrific explosion of the store’s medical compounds. Fortunately, the fire somehow extinguished itself before causing extensive damage to the surrounding buildings, and firemen found the damage primarily isolated to the pharmacy’s stock room.

When Fred Fox, the pharmacy’s clerk, arrived to work at 7:30 in the morning to open the store for business, he noticed a foul odor. As he walked further into the building, he found the air stiffling with the fumes of wood alcohol. He went from the main store building into the prescription room, and although he found the fumes in the air still stronger, he still did not discover the cause of the odor. Finally, he opened the door to the store room at the extreme back of the building and discovered the cause of the mysterious fumes. There, in the center of the room, was a large puddle of wood alcohol that was gathering from a stream of the stuff pouring out of a large barrel in the corner of the room. All of the shelves in the room were charred black, and many of the bottles of drug mixtures that had been setting upon them had exploded; others were broken open and their contents popping and fizzing.

The room was filled with an intense heat, and everything in the room was either scorched or completely burned to ashes. The puddle of wood alcohol in the center of the room had evidently been the cause of the fire, but was no longer burning. Fox hurriedly called the local authorities to the bizarre scene. When a reporter visited the scene two hours later, he reported that the drug mixtures on the shelves continued to pop and fizz, “...still voicing their discontent”.

The cause of the fire’s extinction puzzled investigators, who were forced to contend that the fire had most likely extinguished itself, either by burning itself out our stiffling itself with smoke. They were much more successful at figuring out the cause of the fire. Footprints in the snow traced the path of the arsonist, who entered the building through a rear basement door before climbing into the upper store room by way of a trap door. The wood alcohol was set alight by a small pile of lit paper. Footprints also led away from the scene and down an alley, but there ended. Authorites concluded that Ambrose had suffered a close call, as the burning pharmacy could have easily created a devastating explosion.

Source:
The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican (Evening ed.). January 11, 1916: p. 2.

--Jayme L. Job

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