1920s
Newport’s old-timers remembered for years how eerie the town seemed after the fire, looking to the veterans like scenes they had witnessed during World War I. Whole blocks were swept clean of homes, and then suddenly it would be evident that the wind had shifted...
1920s
A devastating fire in March 1926 destroyed more than 280 businesses and homes in a 30-block area. Most of the town’s fine homes burned to the ground, and the fire smoldered for a week. It started during a high wind when wooden shingles caught fire in a...
1920s
The John Stayton home was another lovely structure and one that mercifully survived. Historian Marvin Schwartz write, “Wealthy families celebrated their good fortune, building large, expansive homes with elaborate parquet flooring, railings, and wall...
1920s
The home of Sigmund and Elise Wolff was one of the fine homes in downtown Newport that soon would fall prey to the fire of 1926. Note the unidentified black nursemaid, a fixture in every prosperous white home at the time.
1920s
Bob Logan sits on one of the barges being loaded for shipment from his mill in 1924. Railcars also stand by waiting to be loaded, as does another steamboat docked at the river’s edge in Newport. Strong arms and broad shoulders were needed to do this backbreaking...
1920s
The steamer F.W. Tucker sits at a lumberyard in Jackson County, probably Bob Logan’s, being loaded in the 1920’s. African American laborers are standing by waiting to load the cut lumber onto barges that the steamboat will push down the White River to...
