1920 Houston Hotel fire: ‘This needs to be marked so it’s not forgotten ...’
Posted by: 
saopaulo1
N 42° 14.056 W 121° 46.932
10T E 600485 N 4676504
A story about a marker in Linkville Cemetery.
Waymark Code: WMYZ2D
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 08/13/2018
Views: 1
"I t was Labor Day weekend, 1920. Hotels in downtown Klamath Falls were packed with visitors in town for the holiday celebration.
Rooms at the Houston Hotel at the corner of Main and Second streets were filled and people slept on cots in the hallways. At about 3 a.m., a pile of greasy rags ignited.
City night patrolman M.L. Barnett spotted and reported the fire.
Firefighters arrived to chaos. Flames by then had engulfed two blocks on both sides of the street. People on the hotel’s second floor were trying to escape using ropes dangling from windows. While the fire department struggled to access city water lines, the inferno grew.
The next day, the annual Labor Day parade passed the smoking rubble of the Houston Hotel.
The fire claimed the lives of at least 14 people, the deadliest blaze in Klamath Falls history.
The victims were buried in unmarked plots in the Linkville Cemetery.
More than 90 years later, those graves will be recognized when the Klamath County Historical Society dedicates a monument Saturday to the victims of the Houston Hotel fire.
The Klamath Falls Parks Department will host a ceremony commemorating an engraved marker designating the burial site of seven of 14 fire victims. The ceremony will be at 11:30 a.m. Saturday. A tour of grave sites will follow the ceremony." (
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