The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Miles and miles of prairie grass grew on the flat lands and bottoms of Henderson County and an ever present threat to this wild country was prairie fires.
Especially in the fall of the year some careless trapper's or Indian's campfire would spark and the flames would run like "wildfire," roaring, leaping, seething, spreading wider and wider like waves of the ocean over the plain, up the high bluffs, across the hills and valleys out onto the vast prairies, carrying destruction to everything in its path.
When settlers saw the smoke, all, whether man, woman, or child would turn out to fight to save their own home or the property of neighbors.
They would even go miles to fight the fire working 12 to 20 hours at a time without rest, for to lose the battle meant they would lose their home.
It was in one of those fires in which Tamatown, an Indian town near Gladstone, was burned; the fire came up so suddenly that they had no time to save anything.
1882 History of Henderson County