1956 VALLEY CITY FIRE

On a cold winter night in 1956, January 26th, there was a fire that every member of the Valley City (ND) High School Class of 1961 will never forget. Valley Appliance and the S and L Store, on a principal corner of Central Avenue in the downtown area, burned to the ground. In the video on this blog, recorded on November 20, 2014, at the President's House on the campus of Valley City State University, Barbara (Sheppard) Lang recalls that night and what it meant to her and her family. Her dad, Roy Sheppard, owned Valley Appliance. The fire didn't defeat him. He rebuilt his store, re-named it "Sheppard's," selling not only furniture and appliances but that's where I bought the latest pop tunes in the 1950's 45 r.p.m. format. Sheppard's was the town's source of records for teenagers, many of whom owned those new players with the fat spindle.

Wes Anderson, curator of the Barnes County Historical Museum, supplied us with color slides shot that January night by Jim Miller. Wes also made available a rendering of the former Valley City Junior High School as stood in 1956, when the Class of 1961 kids were middle school students. He also sent us a photo of the Right Price Department Store, which burned down decades before the Sheppard's/S and L fire.

After seeing the first version of our video, Al Olson, older brother of our classmate, Warren Olson, remembered he had shot a number of black and white photographs of the fire. While the color photographs bring to life the drama of the event in a vivid orange-red, Al's black and white photographs present the event in greater detail through very clear and well-shot gray-scale images. If you're a photographic bug, like me, Al tells us that he "..had notations on the back of several of my original prints that indicate f/2 - 1/60th (of a second shutter speed)." Al and I both think he shot his black and whites on Kodak's popular Tri-X film, the workhorse of serious amateurs and press/sports photographers back in the 1950s. I must say he achieved amazing sharpness even though they were all hand-held exposures. Really appreciate your sharing your photographs with us, Al. They really added to our video production!

Thanks to Jim, Wes and Al for their contributions to this project. Images from the video are posted below and you can see and hear Barbara's memoir of that night by clicking here. - Larry Gauper 10 February 2015.

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Color slides by Jim Miller:

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Photographs by Al Olson:

The firemen prevented the fire from spreading to Our Savior's Lutheran Church

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Other images used in the video:

Painting of ruins by Valley City artist Phyllis Myhre

Valley City Junior High School, circa 1950s

This prominent Valley City store burned several decades before the 1956 fire

The re-built building that housed Sheppard's and The Fair Store for many years.

To view the video, click here