cally, the fire was set by an arsonist hired by the out-of-town owner to collect insurance.
Two local school teachers were returning with their dates in the "wee" hours of the morning and discovered the fire, which by this time had gained much headway. They alerted Mr. and Mrs. Baumgardner and their two daughters, who resided in the rooms over the restaurant. The family escaped via the outside stairway, saving only the clothes on their backs.
The fire spread quickly to the adjoining drug store on the east and to the Security Bank across the alley to the west. From the bank, the flames roared on to the shed west of the bank. Since McCallsburg had no fire truck, the Nevada Fire Department was summoned, but the buildings were nearly gone by the time the fire truck arrived. Little could be done except to cool the nearby buildings. The only water supply available was the cistern on the west side of the present Co-op lumber shed. It took at least two days before the bank safe was cool enough to allow it to be opened. Very little was saved from any of the businesses.
George Shearer suffered the biggest loss as he had very little insurance on his large drug store stock, and he had just received his big Christmas order. He started up again in a small way in the hotel, and he and his wife eventually opened a cafe in the building which was razed on the site of the new post office building. This same building was also the home of the Security Bank after the big fire, until it voluntarily closed its doors during the great depression of the early thirties. The State Bank had been forced into receivership prior to this, so McCallsburg was left without a bank until 1940 when the State Bank & Trust Company of Nevada opened a branch office in the hotel with Frank Nail as manager. The depression and the fire of 1925 were both severe blows to McCallsburg.
Another memorable event in McCallsburg's history was the severe winter of 1935 - 1936. Friday, February 7, 1936, was a calm, spring-like day, but during the night a cold front moved in, bringing a terrible snowstorm. By late the next day the snow had drifted enough to stall the southbound Rock Island passenger train two miles north of McCallsburg. The conductor managed to walk into town to get help. Fortunately, there was a freight train on the siding waiting for the passenger train to pass. The big steam engine of the freight train managed to barrel its way through to the stranded train, and together the engines brought the passengers into McCallsburg. There the train, loaded with hundreds of people, was stranded as the storm grew worse. With the temperature falling to nearly 30 degrees below zero, an appeal went out to everyone willing to work.
Because of the numbers to be fed, the food stocks in the dining car ran low and had to replenished with supplies from local stores. The next problem was to keep the engine boilers hot to provide heat for the cars. L.G. Ellingson's truck was hired to transfer coal from a freight car to the engines. Water for the boilers was obtained by filling tubs with snow and dumping it into the water tanks in the engine tenders. Many local men volunteered to keep the endless cycle going. They could work only in short shifts because of the severe cold. The depot was the hub of activity such as McCallsburg had never seen before. It happened that a radio announcer from WHO was on the train, and he relayed a live broadcast of the affair via the depot telephone to the Des Moines station. To add to the excitement, the depot caught fire from an overheated coal stove. The fire was extinguished, but it added drama to the special broadcast.
The big operation was kept going all Saturday night until noon on Sunday, when a snow plow with a double header pushing it fought its way up from Des Moines to open the track so the passengers could proceed. This ended the excitement at the depot, but the blizzard continued. With the town isolated from the outside, the food and coal situation became critical. It was not until the middle of the week that the storm subsided and the road to highway 65 was opened. Many places on highway 65 would permit only one-way traffic, and the roads would drift shut almost as fast as they were opened. Many of the cuts were higher than the cars. Horse-drawn bobsleds were put into service, and in many places, the roads were detoured through the fields to avoid the big drifts. Voluntary crews were formed to shovel through the drifts which the snow plows could not handle.
As soon as conditions permitted, the double header snow plow returned from the south to open the track north from McCallsburg. The first big drift was just north of the road to Roland. The two mammoth engines were unable to plow through the hard drift. Spectators actually stepped from the drift to the top of the engine cab. The engineer invited them into the cab of the engine to get warm while the railroad crew of fifty or more men attempted to shovel the engines free. When the engines were able to back up sufficiently, they proceeded to make short runs toward the stuck plow and drove it like a stake, inch by inch, through the fifteen foot-high drift. By late afternoon they made it through this drift, only to encounter a similar situation two miles north, where the passenger train was stuck on Saturday. This ended the show until a few days later when the railroad sent a big rotary plow from Minneapolis. This again brought out spectators who were willing to brave the below-zero temperatures to see the plow devour its way through McCallsburg, as it opened the line for traffic again.
In about 1933, the men of the community gathered one summer day and proceeded to clear the remains of the big fire to construct a diamond for softball. Softball was very popular at the time because few people could afford any amusements because of the hard times. This land was bare from the Tett two-story building west to the corner, and remained bare until Jim Hall moved in his present store building. After the diamond was completed, the big softball tournament of 1933 was played there. Nearly two dozen teams participated. The games started before noon, and were played continuously on three diamonds until dark - on the school diamond, the one west of the Tett building, and one in Vallem's pasture. Class "A" teams were the regularly organized teams from neighboring towns. Class "B" teams mostly represented the threshing runs from around McCallsburg. These teams attracted so many