Factory On Fire: Cocheco Mill Blaze of 1907

Mark Leno Jr. & Thom Hindle 

This vivid and comprehensive narrative of the January 1907 fire which ravaged the Cocheco Manufacturing Company's Mill #1 in Dover, NH has long needed to be written. The days-long blaze on Washington Street was a most significant event in early 20th Century Dover, but it also happened contemporaneously with two national trends: the rising power of the American worker and the unprecedented decline of the northern textile industry. Taken together, these economic and societal changes, along with financial repercussions from the fire, sounded the early death knell for cotton manufacturing in Dover.