100 years of infamous Bourne fires: Great Sagamore Marsh to Cleveland's summer White House

BOURNE – It was a quiet midweek afternoon in Sagamore Beach when all hell broke loose in the Great Sagamore Marsh.

The wetland had ignited. This was a wildfire. An extreme anomaly. The marsh, which naturally separates year-round homes at the western edge of the sprawling wetland from seasonal cottages lined up to the east along Phillips Road, was burning.

And it was stubborn. Dry weather with low humidity, a steady breeze out of Cape Cod Bay, plenty of biomass. Flames would die in wet spots and flash anew in upland. And spread south toward the canal. Most were out of reach.

Firefighters from Bourne, Otis, Falmouth, Sandwich, Onset and Plymouth, along with the state forestry division, descended on the suddenly fiery marsh, one of the most difficult Cape Cod fires of the late 1970s.

What can a fire department accomplish when a vast wetland burns out of control? When a world apart fills with thick gray smoke? When firefighting is challenged anew? Veteran firefighters and their officers knew the quick answer. Save nearby homes.

Wildlife, including a deer herd, scattered into woods north and west of the marsh between Williston and Phillips roads and from Pilgrim Road to Scusset Beach Road, leading to the state reservation with its volatile scrub pine landscape. A few flames jumped the canal.

Given access hindrances such as swampy conditions surrounded by bull-brier, authorities considered ordering an evacuation of homes situated on the edge of the Upper Cape wetland; explored for years by only those who knew water depths in exact locations and pathways beaten into marsh grass that meandered but were considered somewhat safe.

“Engine Three got behind the flames that day,” former Bourne Fire Chief Steven Philbrick, then a young firefighter, recalled in a Jan. 18 interview. “I was working the dispatch (desk). So, I missed the action. But they saved four homes along Phillips Road that afternoon. It was remarkable.”

Will Bourne celebrate the fire department's centennial in 2025?

The Bourne Fire Department's nearly century-long history is filled with extraordinary stories like the Great Sagamore Marsh Fire. As the department comes up on its 100th year in existence, Philbrick, now long-retired, says it is time to look back and remember — with an observance, special event or apparatus-filled parade — in 2025.

He has asked the Select Board to appoint a fire department Centennial Committee, recommending Chief David Cody, Lt. Greg Edgcomb, Call Captain Phil Tura and retired firefighter Mike Hodge, as well as others, serve on the panel.

Select Board Chair Mary Jane Mastrangelo in a Jan. 18 email said she plans to invite Philbrick to a February meeting, and that the board should decide if a celebration should be planned by a formal town committee or an informal group of interested residents.

$2 wages, burned down headquarters, 1938 hurricane: Founding a Bourne fire department

Bourne historian Michael Burgess of Westerly, Rhode Island, a ‘Bourne Then and Now’ newspaper columnist, has long chronicled the Bourne Fire Department’s early days. He donated his files and writings to the Bourne Archives.

The Buzzards Bay Progressive Society was established in early 1900, Burgess wrote in a Jan. 17 email, and it bought the first fire apparatus housed at Cohasset Hall on Main Street. In 1925, the Bourne Fire Department was established and used that structure, he said.

“In September 1931, while firefighters fought a blaze in a barn behind the Buzzards Bay Hotel, a spark set fire to the roof of department headquarters, 700 feet away,” he said. “Both wood buildings burned to the ground.

Town Clerk Barry Johnson's father was a permanent member of the department when the tragic and cataclysmic 1938 summer hurricane hit the region, Johnson wrote in a Jan. 18 email. His grandmother was “a very active member” of the early Progressive Society, he said.

“I was a member of the Buzzards Bay station group,” Johnson said. “Got paid $2 an hour. We used to go head-to-head with Monument Beach group. Deputy Chief Bob Eldridge gave me my first chance in a snowbank to run the nozzle of the fire house at a Buzzards Bay fire.”

The 1925 town meeting included four articles to establish the department. Arguments pivoted on increased property protection, additions to the tax rolls and immediate reductions in fire insurance rates “in some localities.”

Voters were told there was no need to buy a pumper engine. It would be too costly, and there were sufficient and available water supplies, they were told.

Pay for call firemen would be $1 to respond to a fire and working the flames during the first hour. They would be paid 50 cents per hour if needed after that.

Many recent fires were unique

The Bourne Fire Department has battled infamous blazes in the past half-century that are part of department lore and town history.

The case of the 1973 fire that destroyed the Gray Gables Inn, the former summer White House of Grover Cleveland, was never solved. State authorities said the cause was arson. There was an investigation. It remains open.

The fiery high-profile destruction of the Domino’s nightclub and Glady’s Diner at Main Street in the early 1970s was caused by a kitchen grease build-up, according to investigators. Arson, meanwhile, has long been suspected as the cause of the Sierra Gold Room destruction at North Sagamore in 1976.

Fire destroyed the Sagamore Lodge overlooking Cape Cod Bay in 1974. A 1975 inferno burned 1,200 acres in the Town Forest. And a 1991 nighttime China Bay restaurant fire in Buzzards Bay could not be extinguished until the gas company arrived the next morning to shut off its feed.

There were other fires of note: the Fiddlebees nightclub at Buttermilk Bay, Bob’s Sea Grille at the Cohasset Narrows, the 2007 Mezza Luna blaze at Main Street. And the May 2019 apartment house fire at Trading Post Corners.

A 1993 fire destroyed the Sagamore Lumber Co. And the Dec. 22, 1981 shipboard fire on the Massachusetts Maritime Academy training ship Bay State killed a cadet. Philbrick and now retired firefighter Paul Forsberg were first on the scene at MMA, observing cadets aboard the ship gasping for air through portholes, their faces blackened by smoke.

“We got the ladder up and started getting cadets off the ship,” Philbrick said on Jan. 18. “Sadly, a student died. We just happened to be in the area on a training mission when we saw the black smoke.”

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Bourne's century of firefighting: Great Sagamore Marsh fire and more