Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories.
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It was sometime in mid-January of 1975, not long after Christmas, when I heard a siren wail. It was one long blast, which meant there was a fire in the business district, in the center of town. I didn’t pay too much attention at first, but the siren kept wailing. Oh man, not again. Only a few months earlier, The Carney Store, at the corner of Sixth and Main streets, was totally destroyed by fire.
The siren kept wailing, so I decided to check it out. I jumped into our car and headed down Fifth Street. The business district was completely blocked off. A firetruck was in front of the Oakland Hotel, but it wasn’t dousing the roof with water as they had done at the Carney fire. I did see firemen carrying equipment as they ran in and out of the hotel’s front door. I saw no flames, but I could tell by the way those firemen were running in and out, that there was something serious going on inside that three story building.
Maybe 10 minutes later, the hotel was filling up with black smoke. Then the smoke began to leak out in a few places, much like it did at the Carney fire only a block away. As Yogi Berra used to say, “it was déjà vu all over again.” By the end of the day, the fire had engulfed the entire hotel. The three story Marysville landmark, which opened in 1895, was no more.
But it wasn’t just the hotel that was lost. There were other businesses in and adjacent to the hotel. For example, “Doc” Foster’s drug store and soda fountain was connected to the hotel lobby, as was a “watering hole called the Sportsman’s Lounge. Then there was a barbershop in the basement, and a few other things like that. The fire put them all out of business.
As I watched the fire destroy the hotel, I heard others in the crowd speculate about how it started in the hotel’s kitchen. Maybe some grease was spilled on an open flame, or something like that. But I don’t think anyone knew for sure. I recently tried to find out what caused it, but I was unsuccessful.
But one thing is clear: those six or seven months in the mid 1970s were a costly time for Marysville, when two important parts of our town’s business community went up in smoke.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at williamboyd514@gmail.com