The Great Fire

Maryland Agricultural College, 1912

On November 29, 1912, smoke and flames interrupted a Thanksgiving dance in the Barracks of Maryland Agricultural College. Most students and faculty members had gone home to celebrate Thanksgiving, but the fifty or so who remained on campus faced a scene that would change the course of the institution's history.

Eerily enough, a student had already wondered what would happen if the college were to burn in a poem written for the 1897 Reveille yearbook.

""

Dance goers posed for a portrait only minutes before someone discovered the fire. (Acc. 72-217)