The Great Hinckley Fire: A Tornado Of Fire
The Hinckley Fire
Samantha Beckers
Junior Division
Individual Website
Process Paper
My teacher handed out a worksheet for History Day. You had to write down 3 things you were interested in. On one of the lines I put down The Great Hinckley Fire. On another line I put down a tornado, but one of my classmates took that so I crossed it off my list. At recess the day we handed our sheets in, she spoke to me and said how much the fire would be good for the turning point theme. I was pretty interested in it after that. I told my dad what I had decided on. Our first assignment was to look up our topic on Wikipedia for an overview. I saw how badly this fire affected Hinckley. I got to see some of the sources they used too.
I read 25 things including books, newspapers, and diaries. My class took a field trip to the Minnesota Historical Society. I had requested things from their library. Everything was excellent. I found descriptions of how dry the summer was before the fire. I scanned those and took notes from them. I then took all of my stuff and carved it into the best possible paragraphs. I scanned in pictures from a few of the books. I lined the pictures from the books up with the paragraphs that matched them. I counted all my notecards I had around 80. I typed all of the paragraphs down onto the website.
I decided on a website since my dad works with computers and he could help me. I also thought the website would allow me to use more words than the other choices. I thought it would let me be more creative too with all the colors and pictures. It would also be pretty cool to make a website with all the links, pictures, colors, and fonts. I would get to learn how to make a website and that could be useful in the future.
I learned that the fire was made worse because of dry slashings left by careless lumbermen. Because of this, the state government passed a law to create a system of fire wardens. After the fire in Hinckley, there were a few more major fires due to slashings. These were turning points because the state created more laws and a constitutional amendment that the lumbermen could not leave slashings and they had to replant trees where one was cut down. They also said that some areas were off limits to lumberjacks to conserve forests. These changes helped us to save the forests so we have trees in the future.
(429 words)
I read 25 things including books, newspapers, and diaries. My class took a field trip to the Minnesota Historical Society. I had requested things from their library. Everything was excellent. I found descriptions of how dry the summer was before the fire. I scanned those and took notes from them. I then took all of my stuff and carved it into the best possible paragraphs. I scanned in pictures from a few of the books. I lined the pictures from the books up with the paragraphs that matched them. I counted all my notecards I had around 80. I typed all of the paragraphs down onto the website.
I decided on a website since my dad works with computers and he could help me. I also thought the website would allow me to use more words than the other choices. I thought it would let me be more creative too with all the colors and pictures. It would also be pretty cool to make a website with all the links, pictures, colors, and fonts. I would get to learn how to make a website and that could be useful in the future.
I learned that the fire was made worse because of dry slashings left by careless lumbermen. Because of this, the state government passed a law to create a system of fire wardens. After the fire in Hinckley, there were a few more major fires due to slashings. These were turning points because the state created more laws and a constitutional amendment that the lumbermen could not leave slashings and they had to replant trees where one was cut down. They also said that some areas were off limits to lumberjacks to conserve forests. These changes helped us to save the forests so we have trees in the future.
(429 words)