Divers learn more about 1909 crib fire

It was an unusually warm January day when workers at Mount Greenwood Cemetery lowered dozens of caskets into a mass grave as deep and wide as a basement.

More than 50 men perished in a mysterious 1909 fire that swept through a water-intake crib a mile off the shores of Lake Michigan near 71st Street. The men were living and working on the lake to build a tunnel under Lake Michigan.

The tunnel would supply Chicago's growing South Side with fresh drinking water.

While the cause of the Jan. 20, 1909, fire remains one of Chicago's great unsolved mysteries -- a janitor was rumored to have sprinkled gasoline to ward off bedbugs -- the fire also represents a chapter of city history largely unknown.

Unlike Chicago's other storied fires, this one slipped into history books without much attention until divers with the Underwater Archeological Society of Chicago began exploring sunken remnants of the disaster. Members of the society regularly explore Chicago's waterways, photographing shipwrecks and sunken vessels.

"Before railroads, everything passed through Chicago and the Great Lakes on ships," society member Don Doherty said.

The underwater archeologists spent months studying the sunken wreckage, logging nearly 40 dives to the lake floor where the burning crib collapsed.

The crib was a wood-and-stone structure that housed the men for weeks at a time while they worked on the brick-lined tunnel. They were paid $1 to $2 a week. Most of the men were migrant workers -- many of them Irish -- so little documentation exists about their identities. They also suffered burns beyond recognition.

The fire broke out in the morning, and within seconds the building was engulfed. Someone called on-shore headquarters, yelling into the telephone: "The crib is on fire! For God's sake send help at once or we will be burned alive! The tug...."

With that, communication was lost.

"My understanding was that with this fire, the rescue boats couldn't get through the icy water," said former Chicago Fire Commissioner James Joyce, who lives near the cemetery. "I had always heard about the crib fire but wanted to learn more."

After the men died, their employer, contractor George Jackson, paid to have them buried in Mount Greenwood Cemetery.

Adam Zelitzky lives across the street from the cemetery. He noticed the grave marker while walking his dog one day and immediately began searching the Internet to learn more.

"I saw the marker and thought, 'crib death?' So I looked it up. I love Chicago history," he said.

Mount Greenwood Cemetery was one of the first park-like cemeteries at the time of the fire. Thousands of mourners stood in silence along 111th Street as the funeral procession made its way across town.

"They came here in horse-drawn hearses," said Edris Hoover, a Morgan Park resident and member of Ridge Historical Society.

The society hosts programs throughout the year that focus on the Chicago neighborhoods of Beverly Hills, Morgan Park, Washington Heights and Mount Greenwood.

A plaque at the site, donated by the Mount Greenwood Cemetery Association, reads: "In Memory of Crib Fire, 45 unknown men, Jan. 20, 1909."