PASCACK VALLEY—This week in history: A fire at Etna. We go back 120 years, to mid- November 1902, when a fire took out two homes in Emerson—or as it was called then, Etna. While the fire is not important historically, the details surrounding it tell us much about the Pascack Valley then.
At about 5 on the morning of Tuesday, Nov. 18, 1902, a fire broke out in the kitchen at the home of William Dalton on Kinderkamack Road. English-born Dalton, 50, was a salesman in the business of men’s clothing. While he had been at home the previous day, he had stayed overnight at the home of his married daughter in Hillsdale.
Next door to the Daltons lived the Ackerman family. James Alfred Ackerman, 50, was the principal of the local schoolhouse on Old Hook Road. Mr. Ackerman was the first to notice the fire. Finding nobody at home at the Dalton residence, he forced his way through the door. He attempted to put out the fire, but to no avail. Even after subduing the flames, the fire broke out again, worse than before, and within minutes the second story of the Dalton home was engulfed in flames.
Fighting a working structure fire in 2022 is challenging enough, let alone in 1902. At the time, not only did Emerson not yet have a fire department, the borough also had no water supply.
The Westwood firemen who had rushed to the scene with their horse-drawn wagon quickly realized that the Dalton house was doomed, and the Ackerman residence, sitting 25 feet away, was in great danger. They did the only thing they could—they rushed to remove all the furniture from the Ackerman household before the flames spread.
The fire did indeed spread next door, and the Dalton and Ackerman homes went down together, charred ruins.
Fortunately, both places were insured. A local newspaper reported that the Dalton house was valued at about $2,000 and the Ackerman house at $3,000. (You read that correctly. Pascack Valley home prices, and the value of a dollar, have changed significantly over the last 120 years.)
Although Ackerman was unable to save his own home, about a year later he did a great service to the community when he prevented a fire at the Old Hook schoolhouse, where he was principal. In December 1903 he discovered a floor beam on fire over the furnace in the school, and successfully put it out with a few buckets of water.
— Kristin Beuscher is president of the Pascack Historical Society.