TOWERING INFERNO AT HUNGARIAN MILLS

Leaping flames destroyed a five-story grain elevator at the Hungarian Mills in Denver's Lodo district - more than a century ago.

As the blaze burned, on Oct. 21, 1908, office staff rescued the books and laborers struggled to save anything else that wasn't nailed down. The towering inferno reached beyond fire department hose lines and roared out of control for an hour. 

Fire and Water Engineering magazine said: "When Chief T. F. Owens and the department arrived on the scene, they found that the fire, which had been set in the wagon shed and had spread thence to the bottom of an air-flue, was blazing furiously. It had made its way up the flue and involved 75 ft. of the roof."

The doomed elevator was located at old 7th and Wazee streets. The old-line Denver business was named for a milling process developed in Hungary.