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To Build a Fire

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Jack London's Short Story to Build a Fire

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Published: Feb 12, 2024

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• London, Jack. "To Build a Fire."

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To Build a Fire

51 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

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Summary: “to build a fire”.

“To Build a Fire” is a short story by American writer Jack London. It was published in Century Magazine in 1908, and this guide references the 1908 edition. An earlier version of the story was published in Youth’s Companion in 1902. It is one of London’s many adventure stories based in the Klondike, where he prospected as a young man. There are six film versions of the story.

The story is set during the 1890s gold rush in the Klondike region of the Yukon. At daybreak, an unnamed man turns off the main Yukon trail to follow a seldom-used trail through spruce timberland. It is winter and the sky is clear, but there is no sun. In a few days, the sun will again appear above the horizon.

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He looks back at the path of the Yukon river, which is covered with several feet of ice and snow. In the distance, he sees the “dark hair-line” (1) that is the main trail. The man is unmoved by the landscape. As a “newcomer in the land” (2), his unaffectedness is not attributable to experience. Rather, he is not imaginative. He is “quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances” (2). It is far below freezing, but this doesn’t compel him to consider his own human frailty.

Carrying onward, the man spits, and it freezes before hitting the ground. He’s on his way to a prospector camp, “where a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready” (2). He has his lunch tucked against his skin and smiles when he thinks about taking a break to eat it. His lunch is the only thing he carries.

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A large husky follows behind the man. The dog’s instinct tells it that it is too cold to be traveling. It is 75 degrees below zero. The dog expects the man to find shelter and start a fire. The dog’s fur and the man’s beard are both frosted. The man chews tobacco. When he spits, the juice remains on his chin and turns his beard amber. He checks his watch and calculates that his pace is four miles per hour. At 12:30 pm he should arrive at the forks, where he plans to eat lunch.

There are no tracks on the trail. It has been a month since anyone has followed this path. The man acknowledges that he has never felt such intense cold. He uses his mittened hand to rub his exposed nose and cheeks, but they again go numb as soon as he stops rubbing. He doesn’t consider frosted cheeks to be a serious health concern.

The man notes the subtle changes in the snow-covered creek’s formation and is careful where to place his feet as he walks. He knows there are springs that bubble up and could cause him to step through the ice and into water. This is a great danger and compels him to walk carefully.

Two hours pass and he continues to look for signs of under-ice pools. At one point, he senses this danger and tries to coax the dog into walking in front of him. The dog won’t do it, so the man pushes it forward. The ice breaks, and the dog’s legs get wet. The dog’s instinct compels it to lick away the ice. The man helps to remove the ice from the dog’s fur.

It is noon and there is still no sun; the day is as bright as it will be. The man arrives at the forks and is pleased with his pace. He is confident he will make it to camp by six o’clock that evening. He pulls out his lunch, exposing his fingers, which quickly become numb. He tries to eat his biscuit, but his “ice-muzzle” (6) prevents him from biting into it. Because he has stopped moving, his toes go numb inside his moccasins. He stamps his feet and waves his arms until feeling returns. He remembers an old man who warned him about how cold it could get in this country. Though he laughed at the man, he now realizes the truth of his words. He builds a fire and thaws his face over it. The dog enjoys the fire while the man eats his biscuit.

The man continues down the trail, much to the disappointment of the dog, who wants to remain near the fire. The man’s ancestry doesn’t instill in him a true understanding of the cold; however, the dog’s lineage does provide this understanding. The dog is essentially the man’s slave and does not care about the man’s welfare. The man makes whipping sounds, compelling the dog to follow him away from the fire.

The man’s foot breaks through the ice, and he becomes wet halfway to the knees. He is angered because this will delay his arrival in camp by an hour. He climbs up an embankment and starts a fire. Because his feet are wet, he is in serious danger; therefore, he “work[s] slowly and carefully” (8) at the fire’s construction. Failure to construct an adequate fire could lead to his death. 

He has to take off his mittens to build the fire. Because he is no longer walking briskly, his blood circulation weakens, and his extremities quickly go numb. His wet feet are beginning to freeze, and his nose and cheeks are already frozen.

The fire is now burning, making the man feel safe. He recalls the old man’s advice that no one should travel alone across the Klondike when the temperature is colder than 50 below zero. He feels proud that, despite this advice, he has saved himself and is successfully making the transit by himself. His fingers are “lifeless” (10), and he struggles to hold a twig. He starts to remove his ice-covered moccasins, but from above the over-weighted tree boughs dump snow on the fire, snuffing it out. He realizes that removing twigs from the lower branches had caused the avalanche of snow to fall.

The man feels “as though he ha[s] just heard his own sentence of death” (10). He now understands that he should have followed the old man’s advice about not traveling alone across the Klondike. Though he figures he will lose some toes, he knows he must try to rebuild the fire. He’s losing dexterity in his fingers but manages to lift twigs and bits of moss. The dog watches, hoping for fire.

The man tries to pull a piece of birch bark from his pocket but cannot grip it. He uses his teeth to pull on his mittens and uses all his power to beat his hands against his sides. He feels envy when he sees the dog sitting in the snow, “its wolf-brush of a tail covered warmly over its forefeet” (11).

Sensation begins to return to the man’s fingers. He removes his hand from its mitten to grab the birch bark. He tries to light the bark, but his fingers are again numb, and he drops the matches into the snow. He “devot[es] his whole soul to the matches” (12). Because he no longer has a sense of touch, he tries to fully rely on his vision to retrieve the matches. He again puts on the mitten and scoops the matches into his lap.

The man manages to get a match to his mouth, which he finally manages to light by scraping it against his leg. However, the smoke goes into his nose, causing him to cough and drop the match, which falls to the snow and goes out. He again acknowledges that he should’ve listened to the old man’s advice about traveling with a partner.

In a desperate move, he removes his mittens and manages to get all his remaining matches into his hands. He scratches the matches against his leg and all 70 are ignited at the same time. Though he can’t feel his flesh burning, he can smell it. Deep below his skin, he starts to feel the pain. Still, he holds onto the matches and attempts to light the bark. His endurance fails and he drops the matches, which sizzle in the snow. However, the bark has been lit. He places twigs and dry grasses on the bark. A piece of moss falls directly into the flame. With shivering hands, he tries to poke it away, but he causes the fire to break apart and go out.

He looks at the dog, which “put[s] a wild idea into his head” (13). Recalling a survival story in which a man survived a blizzard by crawling into a steer’s carcass, he decides he will kill the dog and bury his hands inside its body for warmth. He calls the dog to him, but the dog senses the danger and does not obey the command. The man crawls toward the dog, and it moves away from him.

The man uses his mouth to put on his mittens and stands up. His standing position, as well as “the sound of whip-lashes in his voice” (14), compel the dog to come to him. The man reaches for the dog, but he has no feeling in his hands and cannot grab it. He uses his arms to hold the dog against him, and it struggles to get away. The man realizes that he has no means of killing the dog. Because he has no feeling in his hands, he cannot use his knife. He releases the dog, and it moves 40 feet away, where it watches him.

In an attempt to regain feeling, he again beats his hands against the side of his body. This doesn’t work and a fear of death becomes increasingly present. He becomes panicked and starts running along the trail. The dog follows him. He runs “blindly, without intention, in fear such as he had never known in his life” (15). He is no longer shivering and thinks about running all the way to camp. He also thinks that he will soon freeze to death. He clings to the hope that he will reach the boys and they will save him. In the back of his mind, the thought remains that “he would soon be stiff and dead” (15).

As he runs, it’s strange to him that he cannot feel his feet. He realizes he doesn’t have the endurance and starts stumbling. He sits down to rest and regain his energy. Surprisingly, he is no longer shivering. This briefly comforts him, but he then understands it is because he is becoming completely frozen. He imagines his frozen dead body and again starts running. The dog continues to follow him. The man falls and the dog looks at him, “curiously eager and intent” (16). The dog’s apparent well-being angers the man and he curses it.

The cold begins to fully consume him. He goes another 100 feet and falls, feeling “his last panic” (16). Resigning himself to death, he considers how to best die with dignity. He hopes to sleep his way into death, noting that there are worse ways to die than freezing. He imagines the boys finding his body, and then imagines himself alongside the boys when they make this discovery. In another vision, he tells the old man that he was right. He “drowse[s] off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known” (17). The dog waits for him until it realizes that no fire will be made. It catches the scent of death, howls under the stars, and makes its way toward camp, hoping to find others who will provide it with food and fire.

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Residents displaced by Bensenville apartment building fire

Published march 30, 2024 • updated on march 30, 2024 at 8:49 pm.

Multiple residents of a Bensenville apartment building were temporarily forced from their homes on Saturday after a fire tore through the structure.

The fire was reported at around 2 p.m. in the 200 block of Sonny Lane. According to the Bensenville Fire Protection District, a battalion chief responded to the scene and determined smoke was coming from the third floor and that everyone had exited the building.

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Firefighters extinguished the blaze, which was contained to one unit. No one was inside at the time, and no injuries were reported, authorities said. Due to the extent of the damage, the building was deemed uninhabitable.

While the entire building was displaced, it wasn't immediately known how many residents were affected.

The village was working on relocating all those impacted, authorities said.

An investigation was underway on Saturday evening.

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Conservatives Are Getting Comfortable Talking Openly About a National Abortion Ban

After this week’s oral argument, few court watchers believe the Supreme Court is now ready to limit the Food and Drug Administration’s authority to approve mifepristone , a drug used in more than half of all abortions , as opponents of abortion sought. At oral argument in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , it did not appear that the plaintiff doctors persuaded the court that the law inflicted injuries that would give them standing to sue. The reason for the justices’ skepticism is not hard to find. The doctors built their case on a mountain of remote possibilities. Patients might suffer complications from mifepristone—a drug with an impressively low complication rate—and might seek treatment at emergency rooms, where the plaintiffs may happen to practice, when the plaintiffs might not be able to find another physician willing to intervene. And all of that might mean that the plaintiffs would have to act in violation of their conscience. But then again, it might not. That’s why this case seems dead on arrival: The justices seemed unwilling to engage in the sort of rank speculation the plaintiffs have in mind. If this chain of hypotheticals is enough, anyone can bring a constitutional challenge to any drug approval or any law.

But the case was also a vehicle for advancing ever more expansive conscience-based arguments that have become common currency among Christian conservatives—claims of the kind we have seen in well-known cases like the 2014 Hobby Lobby decision recognizing conscience objections to the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act or even last year’s ruling in 303 Creative v. Elenis that allowed a conservative Christian graphic designer to refuse to make custom websites for same-sex weddings.

Today, those with conscience-based objections seek more than to pray or dress in conformity with religious belief. They object to laws providing Americans access to health care or freedom from discrimination. Compliance with these laws, they claim, would make the objector complicit in the assertedly sinful conduct of others.

Objectors bringing this new generation of complicity-based conscience claims invite courts to deny other Americans the protections of the law. In the FDA case, the plaintiffs do not even seek an exemption from the law; through an expansive standing claim, the doctors claim the only way the court could protect their conscience is to strike down FDA approvals providing all Americans access to medication abortion. Simply having mifepristone on the market, they argue, risks making them complicit in abortion.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson zeroed in on the problems with this argument. She observed that Erin Hawley, the attorney for the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, had identified a “broad” and “narrow” idea of conscience. The “narrow” reading was straightforward: “participating in a procedure.” This reading had problems of its own: In fact, no doctor was obliged to prescribe mifepristone, and in any event, federal law provides doctors conscience protections.

Yet Hawley didn’t think complicity ended there. Jackson seemed confused. Did Hawley mean that a handful of other doctors who participated in post-abortion procedures, such as the removal of tissue, were also complicit? Or was Hawley asking the court to recognize the complicity claims of someone who worked in an emergency room where abortions took place, or handed an abortion provider a water bottle?

Jackson spotlighted a defining feature of “conscience-war” claims that one of us (Reva Siegel), writing with Douglas NeJaime, has identified : Conservatives assert ever-expanding complicity-based conscience claims, urging the government to accommodate their claims without making any provision for other Americans who would lose the protection of law. Appealing to the value of conscience obscures the material and dignitary harm that accommodating the objection inflicts on others.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar stressed this point: While the plaintiffs could not say their conscience had been or would be harmed, their claim to conscience obscured harm done to a variety of other parties. That includes the FDA, which had its own scientific judgments displaced, and the pharmaceutical industry, which relies on the FDA approval process to ensure some sort of uniform industry standards. First and foremost, it includes, as Prelogar noted, “women who need access to medication abortion .”

Conscience claims have been alluring to conservatives because, like colorblindness, they allow conservatives to speak as a “minority,” and to assert traditional family values as individual freedom claims. But there is a telling shift. When groups like Alliance Defending Freedom asserted complicity-based conscience claims at the time of Hobby Lobby , they worried about losing in a Supreme Court that was far less conservative—and about alienating a Republican Party that still prioritized electability rather than ideological purity.

By contrast, in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, ADF talked not only about protecting women or safeguarding conscience; it made claims around the Comstock Act, a symbol of Victorian sexual morality focused not on protecting fetal life but on discouraging illicit sex , that ADF seeks to reinvent as a de facto national abortion ban. ADF argued that FDA could not have had the authority to approve telehealth abortions in 2021 because the Comstock Act bars the mailing of abortion pills—and indeed, any abortion-related item. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito both seemed interested in transforming the 1873 Comstock Act into an abortion ban that American voters would never choose to enact. Alito seemed shy about mentioning Comstock by name, instead referring to the hard-to-recognize number in the U.S. Code. Thomas was not so reserved, all but telling attorneys for Danco, the maker of the name-brand mifepristone, that the Comstock Act barred the mailing of the drug.

The very fact that ADF wants to talk about the Comstock Act is remarkable. It seems unwise to hitch the anti-abortion movement’s star to a 19 th -century anti-vice movement known for “Comstockery”: censoring political speech, undermining democratic norms, and condemning any form of sex not intended for procreation .

Voters have already rejected state abortion bans. Just imagine what most Americans would make of it if an already unpopular Supreme Court interpreted a law from 1873 as a sweeping, punitive zombie abortion ban. But worrying about the public’s reaction assumes the movement is seeking to persuade voters rather than simply looking for ways to use power to enforce traditional family values and punish those who become pregnant or might provide them medical care. Anti-abortion groups are planning to revive enforcement of the Comstock Act if Donald Trump wins the presidency , claiming they would not need Congress to act .

The argument in the mifepristone case was a potent reminder of why conservatives have gravitated to conscience claims—and demonstrated the hidden harms that these claims can inflict on other Americans. But the conversation at the Supreme Court this week also suggested that conservatives are preparing to express the values underlying complicity-based conscience claims more openly. As it gains power, members of the anti-abortion movement seem increasingly ready to take off the mask.

Massive fire rips through apartment complex in Lomita

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A massive fire broke out Saturday evening at an apartment complex in Lomita.

Los Angeles County fire crews responded to a call at 6:50 p.m. in the 2100 block of Palos Verdes Drive North, Fire Department officials said.

By 10 p.m., firefighters were still battling the massive three-alarm blaze at the Vista Verde complex. Live video from CBS News showed flames tearing through the roof, which partly collapsed in the first two hours of the blaze.

At one point, it appeared that a transformer exploded near fire crews, who shot water down from ladders and blasted hoses from the ground and a portion of the roof at the roaring flames. Video from Fox 11 News, which lasted for more than an hour, showed parts of the rooftop had collapsed amid the inferno.

Clouds of smoke roiled from the site, which is adjacent to the Green Hills Memorial Park cemetery complex in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Real estate listings describe Vista Verde as a two-story complex with at least 25 units. Injuries have not yet been reported.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

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Corinne Purtill is a science and medicine reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Her writing on science and human behavior has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Time Magazine, the BBC, Quartz and elsewhere. Before joining The Times, she worked as the senior London correspondent for GlobalPost (now PRI) and as a reporter and assignment editor at the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh. She is a native of Southern California and a graduate of Stanford University.

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How to communicate better at work easily and accomplish more.

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Millennial black businesswoman speaking earnestly to colleagues

Some people seem to know instinctively how to get along with others at work: how to make other people comfortable yet get their own points across without friction. This skill can seem elusive to most of us. But Charles Duhigg , Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection , believes that anyone can learn to be a supercommunicator.

“It’s not that people who are supercommunicators are particularly charismatic or are uniquely extroverts,” he says in a recent conversation. “It’s just that they have learned a couple of skills that helped them, and they’ve also trained themselves to pay a little bit closer attention to what’s happening in a conversation and therefore be able to see opportunities.”

Supercommunicators practice several cornerstone skills which Duhigg says anyone can learn.

Start With Questions

Supercommunicators ask deep questions that probe to learn about people’s values, beliefs or experiences. It isn’t enough to ask about necessary facts and data, although those are always significant components of work conversations. Instead, deep questions focus on drawing out and understanding another person’s perspective, motivations and concerns.

For example, Duhigg suggests, a deep question “could be something as simple as, ‘Hey, Jim, I saw that memo you sent out and I'm just wondering, like, you obviously spent a lot of time on it. Tell me why you think it's important? Like, what's going on there that I really need to think about?’” The answers to these questions will cue you to what really matters to the other person—and the things you need to pay attention to as you continue to interact.

Apple Quietly Adds Free Performance Upgrade For All iPhone 12 Users

Prosecutors suggest trump gag order should cover repeated attacks on judge s daughter, ukraine could get millions of artillery shells and soon it s getting its best guns ready to fire away, listen deeply for the heart of things.

No matter how good your questions are, says Duhigg, people always check to see if you’re actually paying attention to their answers or just waiting for the next chance to speak. He recommends using a technique called “looping for understanding” to prove you’re listening. When someone answers a deep question you’ve asked, listen to their answer carefully and then repeat back to them what you just heard—in your own words.

Then, take a step that most people don’t: Verify that you understood the other person correctly. “The reason that’s really powerful is because, first of all, it convinces the other person that we are listening to them,” Duhigg says. “And there’s a reciprocal need in our psychology, that if we listen to them and prove it, they’re going to listen to us in return.”

Identify The Nature Of The Conversation

It’s also important to pay attention to the specific kind of conversation the other person intends to have, because if you can mirror their intention, you can strengthen the relationship. “Every discussion is made up of many different kinds of conversations, and in general, those conversations fall into one of three buckets,” Duhigg explains.

“There are practical conversations, where we’re talking about plans or making decisions together. There are emotional conversations, where I tell you what I’m feeling and I don’t want you to solve my problem, I don’t want you to solve my feelings, I want you just to empathize and connect. And then there are social conversations which are about how we relate to each other in society, and how our social identities influence how we see things.”

According to Duhigg, “All three of these conversations are equally valid, and all three of them very well might happen in one discussion. But what’s important is that they use three different parts of our brains, so if we’re not having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, then we’re unlikely to connect.”

Show Your Desire For Connection

When you demonstrate your human desire for connection, you naturally build trust and can move forward together more easily to accomplish your goals. When people feel connected, they tend to reciprocate at the same depth of authenticity, feeling and meaning, all of which strengthen their sense of relationship. That can be true whether or not the individuals happen to agree about, say, the compensation package or warehouse layout they’re discussing.

It’s also important to match the other person’s tone. When we enter a conversation, “if we feel anxious, or it feels hard, it’s because we don’t actually know if this other person actually wants to be talking to us or if they want to connect with us,” Duhigg explains. “And by the same token, they don’t know if we really want to be talking to them, if we want to connect with them.” But supercommunicators make their desire for connection obvious. “‘They say things like, ‘Oh my gosh! That’s so interesting! What happened next?’” he says. And “they laugh and return’” to the conversation, showing that they want to connect.

Communication Is A Leadership Responsibility

There will always be times when leaders need to be extremely directive, like during a crisis or when an initiative is going off course. But once you get past any need for command-and-control leadership, leaders can motivate employees through conversation. “Look, if you don’t know how to loop for understanding with one of your direct reports, you’ve got a major deficit in your leadership toolbox,” Duhigg says. “If you don’t know how to ask the right questions and listen for what’s unsaid, then you’re taking huge risks because there might be stuff going on.”

But leaders shouldn’t try to control the dialog or anyone’s emotional response. Instead, a leader should face—and work on—the things that the two individuals can control together. “That doesn’t mean that we’re going to agree with each other,” Duhigg says. “But it does mean that we cooperate on some basic things. And that cooperation is going to make it easier for us to find a solution.”

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Aurora Beacon-News | Oswego Village Board agrees to donate land for…

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Aurora beacon-news | oswego village board agrees to donate land for new fire station.

Oswego Village Board members have approved a land donation agreement with the Oswego Fire Protection District for a site for a new fire station designed to address projected growth on the town’s east side.

The board voted unanimously to donate a one-acre parcel at the southwest corner of Wolf’s Crossing Road and Devoe Drive to the fire district, which intends to use the land as the site for its fifth fire station.

The agreement was approved by the board March 18.

“A couple of years ago the fire district approached the village with interest in the land for a fifth fire station,” Oswego Village Administrator Dan Di Santo said in his report to trustees.

The village acquired land in 2022 for the widening of Wolf’s Crossing, Di Santo said. The village needed a portion of land in front of 500 and 460 Wolf’s Crossing. However, the project would have brought the new roadway too close to the existing homes, officials said.

The property owners preferred the village acquire their entire properties rather than a portion, which it then did, according to officials. The village was then left owning approximately one acre more than was necessary for the road-widening project, Di Santo said.

“Once the fire district determined that the size, layout and location of the excess property was sufficient to construct a fire station, the village in 2023 offered to donate the land to the fire district,” Di Santo said.

The village agreed to donate the property at no charge to the fire district, he said.

Some of the terms of the agreement include that the fire district will have a 180-day feasibility period to inspect the property before accepting the donation, and that the real estate closing will take place 30 days after the expiration of the feasibility period or at a mutually agreeable date, according to village officials.

Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.

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One dead, four injured in fire in Northwest D.C. apartment

One person was killed and four others, including a firefighter, were taken to a hospital on Thursday after a fire erupted on the eighth floor of a downtown D.C. apartment building that houses mostly senior citizens, authorities said.

Firefighters were dispatched at 8:35 a.m. to Claridge Towers at 1222 M St. NW, according to D.C. Fire officials. Assistant Fire Chief Andre Edwards said a resident whose body was found on the floor of the burning unit on the eighth floor had died of injuries suffered in the fire. Officials did not identify the victim. The cause of the blaze is under investigation.

Edwards said the firefighter was at the hospital and “doing fine.” He did not say how long the firefighter had been with the department.

Edwards said there were about 233 occupied units in the 10-story building. The apartment building was also a community dining site, said an official with the D.C. Department of Aging and Community Living. The DACL official said that residents displaced by the fire would receive temporary housing, but officials did not say how many people would have to leave their homes.

Firefighters evacuated the building’s top three floors, including the level where the fire occurred, Edwards said. Officials said they were working to help evacuated residents get in touch with their families, saying some people left their cellphones behind when they left their units.

About 10 to 15 residents stood outside the apartment building around 9:30 a.m. waiting to be let back in. Futsum Teferi, who lives on the fifth floor, said he was watching television at 8:30 a.m. when he heard the fire alarm.

“I smelled the smoke and looked out the window and saw everyone evacuating,” Teferi, 65, said. He said he has lived in the building since 2021 and that the alarms have been an occasional problem and will often go off momentarily before stopping.

Another resident, Carmen Brunson, said she heard the alarm after 8 a.m. and looked out her third-floor apartment to see residents evacuating. Brunson, who said she has lived in the apartment for over 15 years, said she immediately got dressed and left just as management was knocking on the doors of other residents.

“I was definitely nervous,” Brunson, 56, said. “I left the apartment and just saw a lot of smoke.”

Brunson said she grew increasingly frustrated with officials telling residents to move further down M Street away from the building and said she hopes that she and others will be able to reenter soon.

In an earlier version of this article, officials stated that the apartment building had nine floors. The building has 10 floors. The article has been corrected.

Fire burns down old Gramling's building; Tallahassee icon served community for a century

Gramling’s , an iconic Tallahassee feed and seed store that closed in 2019 after 104 years in business on South Adams Street, burned to the ground shortly after midnight Saturday.

A large fire consumed the building including an adjoining warehouse and “The Secret Skatepark” in downtown Tallahassee around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.  

There were no injuries reported and the blaze is currently under investigation by the State Fire Marshal's Office. The fire appears to have started in the warehouse.

"We got on the scene and the building was heavily, heavily involved in fire and it spread to that second building very fast," said Todd Inserra, a spokesperson for the Tallahassee Fire Department, adding that firefighters worked quickly to prevent the inferno from spreading.

The fire was steps away from about a dozen local businesses in the 1102 South Adams strip mall and a railroad crossing. It was also a short walk away from the Florida Capitol Building and Cascades Park.

Just after midnight, two fire engines sprayed the blaze from two different directions.

There is no evidence pointing to the cause of the fire yet. A TFD captain on the scene told the present Tallahassee Democrat reporter that the blaze was “under investigation, and a cause was yet to be determined.”

At the heavy blaze’s peak, a billowing smoke cloud, which was multiple stories tall, could be seen from a great distance away. The Tallahassee Police Department assisted TFD at the scene.

A small crowd of five people gathered in the plaza’s parking lot and watched the fire from a safe distance.

"TFD crews were able to get the fire under control within 30 minutes," the agency wrote in an emailed update.

On Saturday morning, two fire trucks and a number of firefighters were still on scene as the hulking remains of the building still smoldering and a few hot spots still burning.

Talethia Edwards, a well-known Bond community advocate, drove by after getting an early morning haircut nearby and was heartbroken by the destruction.

"Gramling's seed store has so much history," she said. "It is where the African-American community came to buy their seeds to plant things to grow. And it's where I've come to get things for my family."

Edwards said she and a few others recently batted around ideas about revitalizing the south-side landmark, perhaps turning it into a "juke joint" or some other spot to socialize.

"When we lose things like this, we lose so much of the memories and the history," she said, "and the younger generation misses out on it."

A history of Gramling's feed and seed store

Back when the store marked its 100-year-anniversary, Stan Gramling was buoyed by optimism about the shop's longevity. But just a few years later, the store which used to easily bring in 23 tons of feed per week, could hardly fill a 3-ton order.

Stan was the third-generation owner of  Gramling’s feed store . His granddad, Owen Irvin Gramling, founded the company in February 1915.

“Whatever you needed for your gardening or farming venture, they had it,” one longtime customer said shortly before they closed. “It was a one-stop shop and it was always a one-stop shop.”

Located at 1010 S. Adams St., Gramling’s had a prime spot to receive shipping orders by train.

But the city has changed: The Duval Street overpass redirected traffic. Breweries and bars have opened nearby. Agriculture moved out of the city. The store seemed immune to the city’s evolving urban landscape and competitive pressures from big box stores and online shopping. But in 2019, that immunity wore off.

Longtime customers mourned the loss.

Cleora Browning was in her 20s in 1953 when she first started going with her mother-in-law to Gramling’s feed store in downtown Tallahassee.

Back then, the store was the hub of the city’s agricultural scene and Browning would get seeds for the family's backyard garden.

Folks could walk, drive, or bike to Gramling’s for all their farming needs — horse halters, mule feed, poultry mashes and winter rye grass seed.

“I tell you, the moment I found out they were closing, I literally had tears in my eyes,” she said in 2019. “I’ve been knowing them for so long, they’re like a family to me.”

In recent years, there was a push to save the building, and renovations were underway. After sitting vacant, a new owner acquired the building last year with dreams of redeveloping it. A prominent architect even jumped in and mocked up sketches for what a new future for the building could look like.

A small troupe of locals noted the landmark store could be an ideal venue for  the Bradfordville Blues Club , another landmark institution that closed in April of last year and took up temporary residence at the American Legion Hall.

The idea even caught the attention of the  National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame Foundation 's board, which reviewed an interest letter submitted by the local coalition of supporters and approved Tallahassee's consideration on the "short list of cities that are bidding for this one-of-a-kind international project."

The story of a 'Secret Skatepark'

The Secret Skatepark was a popular “DIY” skatepark in downtown Tallahassee. The property had many concrete and wooden ramps and planks for skateboard tricks. 

Pictures of the skatepark show that it was overrun by shrubbery and had substantial heaps of trash. It also had a considerable amount of graffiti.

Live music and other events took place there frequently and attracted sizable crowds.

Part of the park is under the overpass of Duval St.

This story includes Democrat archive reports . Christopher Monzon, Samson McCarthy and Vinh Hoang contributed to the reporting of this story . Benjamin Taubman is a reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat and is the editor of Florida State University's student newspaper, the FSView and Florida Flambeau. He can be reached at  [email protected] .