It was October 23, 1947, and Falmouth had not had any rain since September 14. Fire Chief Ray D. Wells received a call that afternoon about a fire off Sippewissett Road across from Gunning Point Road. It was considered “just another brush fire,” according to The Falmouth Enterprise.
But the next morning another alarm sounded, and the Enterprise reported “it was a woods fire which had defied the first night’s effort to encompass it and was spreading steadily over wooded and rocky ridges and gullies where bulldozer and brush breakers had to fight to reach it.
“Before noon on Friday (October 24) it was a forest fire reaching flames for the buildings on the Edgar McCallum estate on the hill above Miles Pond. It was already burning deep into the Two Ponds area of Beebe Woods. The alarm at 11:08 AM worried townspeople.”
Map shows the progress of the fire from Sippewissett Road to its end at the railroad tracks.
The fire, which lasted three days and ended at the road that led to the Lawrence grain mill behind the Enterprise building on Depot Avenue, was chronicled by the Enterprise staff, who watched as the flames descended the hill toward them.
Saturday morning, the newspaper reported, “it was a line of fire marching threateningly upon the theatre, hotels and outbuildings of Tanglewood (site of present Highfield Hall & Gardens and Highfield Theatre) on the tree-covered hill above Falmouth village. This farflung fire jumped the road which bulldozers had widened and cleared in the track of long overgrown wood roads from Elmer Gifford’s on Sippewissett Road to Tanglewood, down along the ridge to the Red Gate [across from Elm Road] on Woods Hole Road. When this long and laboriously opened road barrier was closed there was no stand left for firemen to take except around the Tanglewood buildings and along the railroad tracks at the foot of the Beebe hillside. Along the tracks are oil tanks, lumber yards, coal yards, railroad buildings and gas tanks. Across the track the homes of Falmouth village nestle closely.”
“Through the afternoon the first crisis was met” as the fire approached Tanglewood Arms (now Highfield Hall). Backfires were set to slow the flames, but the fire got within 200 feet of the buildings. The chief stationed firetrucks all around them. Firemen wet the roofs, walls and grass, then with fire hoses directed seven streams of water as far as they could into the oncoming fire. They successfully “divided the fire crown as it came to Tanglewood Arms, and deflected a lesser crown from the theatre area and then from Tanglewood Manor.”
“The final and major crisis” came that afternoon as the fire reached the railroad track from Locust Street to Palmer Avenue bypass, but it was beaten back, saving The Wood Lumber Company, Texaco fuel tanks, Buzzards Bay Gas and the Lawrence grain mill.
Falmouth Fire Chief Ray D. Wells was praised for his leadership during the three-day fire.
Although from Main Street it appeared as though that whole end of the town was on fire, “the red spectacle was more awesome than threatening: the embers and sparks more scary than dangerous. Every business and every homeowner in the path of the southwest wind had spent a long afternoon pouring water on roots, walls and grass. A small army of men and women were on the alert to beat out sparks. At all the critical points there were enough firemen, enough pumpers and hose, and enough water to beat back the flames.”
Enterprise editor and publisher George A. Hough Jr., whose newspaper office and plant were in the path of the fire, shared his memories for “Ring Around the Punch Bowl: A History of Beebe Woods,” written in 1976 by George L. Moses, former Enterprise reporter.
As the crowd of “reporters, photographers, canteen drivers, onlookers” increased in front of the Enterprise building, Mr. Hough wrote, “smoke and dust were blending rapidly. Flames jumped into the tall trees which fringed the woods. The sky flared red and yellow.…The bed of the woods became a mass of flame laced with black shapes of charred limbs and trunks.
“How the fire was finally contained and died was a spectacle for the men who had been spraying the roof of The Enterprise building with a garden hose all day. The wall of flame descended from the Beebe hill. It was terrifying as it swept down on us. It leaped the stonewall boundary of the Beebe estate. The gravel road to the grain mill stopped it. One minute it was on the point of sweeping into town. The next the flames were disappearing in a cloudburst of fire, soot and debris. The hot air picked up sticks and even stones. It sent embers flying across The Enterprise roof and fluttering down on the Gulf gas station next door. In panic the newspaper people called fire headquarters for help. Chief Wells answered the phone.
“‘The fire is all over,’ he said. And it was.”
“While the fire, now scattered through the 1,000 acres of woods in the triangle made by the tracks, Sippewissett Road and the Woods Hole highway, remained a potential menace…the flareups were quickly controlled,” the Enterprise reported.
The fire alert ended on October 29 when rain showers started. More than 1,150 acres were burned, according to town engineer Charles White.
Six towns provided assistance, and “nearly half the boys at Lawrence high school took part…Most were junior call men working out of the Falmouth headquarters. Others served with the crews from their villages.” LHS students put in 459 hours fighting the fire.
Chief Wells reported the fires on Sippewissett Road were deliberately set but no culprit was ever found or arrested. Remarkably, there was no damage to any houses and while nine firefighters were injured, there were no deaths.
In the two days after the fire ended, Falmouth received 2.85 inches of rain.
Beebe Woods was purchased by James Madison Beebe from Joseph Story Fay in 1873. Mr. Beebe’s sons built the mansions, Highfield Hall and Tanglewood, on the parcel. The land was later sold and had several owners. It was under consideration for a 500-house development when Josiah and Josephine Lilly bought it in 1972. They gave 383 acres of the land to the town for conservation and additional land to Falmouth Hospital, the Falmouth Nursing Association, the Cape Cod Conservatory, Falmouth Sports Center and later, Falmouth Academy. Smaller parcels were added to the conservation land: 10 acres donated by the Clowes family, and 1.8 acres on the Punch Bowl acquired by The 300 Committee Land Trust.
Tanglewood was torn down in 1977, but Highfield Hall remains and was completely restored in 2007.
The 300 Committee, the steward of Beebe Woods, describes the geology of the area on its website: “Beebe Woods lies across the top of the line of rocky moraine hills that runs from Woods Hole north to beyond the Cape Cod Canal. These hills formed at the end of the Ice Age, as the ice sheet that had covered eastern North America melted away and left its burden of rock, sand, and gravel marking its former edge. Although the ice is gone, evidence of its work is everywhere: big boulders, rocky but fairly rich soil, hummocky terrain and even Deep Pond, which the Beebes renamed the Punch Bowl.”
The trees in Beebe Woods provided a legacy of the fire. After 1947 pitch pines, which grow quickly on soil exposed by fire, were dominant in the burned areas. Now, however, ecosystem ecologist Christopher Neill notes that “After decades with no fire the pitch pines are dying out. They can survive fire but they need bare mineral soil to germinate. So they regenerate after intense fires but can’t reproduce once that bare soil gets covered over with leaf litter. They are just getting old and prone to tipping up and breaking. Oaks now dominate the forest. White pine, a much less fire tolerant species of pine, is now increasing in Beebe Woods. The huckleberry and blueberry shrub layer will regenerate after fire but will also thrive for a very long time because wind disturbance and relatively sandy and drought-prone soils tends to create a less dense forest canopy than in forests only slightly farther inland.”
There are many trails to explore in Beebe Woods and old bridle paths that were created by the Beebe family. Trail maps are available at The 300 Committee.