Stop 25 – The Department's First Motorized Pumpers

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THE 1926 AND 1938 SEAGRAVE PUMPERS

In nineteen twenty-six, the city bought its first motorized pumper, a Seagrave Metropolitan that could pump seven hundred fifty gallons a minute. It cost twelve thousand five hundred dollars and came by rail from the factory in Columbus, Ohio. It had a six-cylinder engine, an eighty-gallon water tank, eighteen hundred feet of hose, three ladders, and chemical extinguishers.

The second motorized pumper came in nineteen thirty-eight, also a Seagrave, for eight thousand dollars. It had one of the first enclosed cabs, called a sedan cab, with a hundred-fifty-horsepower, eight-cylinder engine, a five-hundred-gallon-a-minute pump, and a hundred-twenty-five-gallon water tank.

In the photographs, you'll see paid firefighters Leo Wilcox and George Crume, and Chief Henry Felthauser, with the nineteen twenty-six pumper.

PAID DRIVERS

When the horse teams and longtime driver White Handley retired, the way the station was staffed changed too.

By nineteen thirty, the department had fifty volunteers and two full-time paid men. Each paid driver worked half the day, and both slept at the station at night. Henry Felthauser, the Fire Chief at the time, was partly paid and ran the department day to day. Leo Wilcox, one of the paid men, was Assistant Chief.

The pumper with the paid man on duty went out on the first alarm. The off-shift paid man hurried to the station, ready to take the second truck or answer another call.