Oregon History This Week: State Capitol Burned Down in '35, Second Time in 80 Years

Published 04/30/25 at 6:45 a.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Salem, Oregon) – This past Sunday, April 25, marked a rather incredible anniversary – although it's not widely talked about anymore. It was 90 years ago to the day that the Oregon State Capitol building in Salem burned down with dramatic intensity, a date that was almost 80 years after the first capitol of Oregon caught fire and fell apart. This time, in 1935, the magnificent dome crumbled, with flames causing the exterior timbers to fall and even melting copper in the structure.

Nearby, at Willamette University, one student caught the blaze from a tower on campus (above). One of the more famous historic shots from Oregon can be seen here, showing roaring flames. Fire crews were called from as far away as Portland, and one firefighter died. The fire went on for 12 hours before it was contained.

According to historians, the Capitol Journal in 1962 and the newspaper Greater Oregon on the day after, it was janitor Walter Wesolowski who first smelled smoke about 6:30 p.m. He was in his office with his son near the elevator shaft, immediately jumping up to investigate.

Full frame photo - courtesy Oregon Archives

“The blaze appeared to have broken out in a basement room below the capitol rotunda,” wrote the Capitol Journal. “Wesolowski’s son was sent to turn on the capitol fire alarm but already flames had licked quietly over the basement ceiling and into wooden beams.”

Exactly when the bell went off and when firefighters first arrived is a bit all over the place in historic accounts, with stories differing on somewhere between 6:30 p.m. and 6:40. That's a curiosity of the story but ultimately not integral: firemen from Salem got there quickly. By 7 p.m., flames were coming out of the dome.

courtesy Oregon Archives

Firemen attempted to contain the blaze within the basement by going in with gas masks on but were quickly overwhelmed by fire and smoke. It collapsed about 8 p.m.

“Salem Alderman Merrill D. Ohling put in a call to Portland, asking for help,” Capitol Journal wrote in its retrospective. “An hour later, Portland Fire Department trucks and crews arrived, helping to save at least the building's shell.”

Before the fire - courtesy Oregon Archives

Willamette University sophomore Floyd McMullen was one of the firemen on-call. He was just starting to run from a chunk of the northwest part of the building that began to fall when he was killed by it.

“By nightfall, it was apparent that the Capitol, a cornerstone of Oregon governance for decades, would not survive the inferno,” wrote Greater Oregon. “Eyewitness accounts detailed the fury of the flames and the subsequent collapse of the dome, leaving little of the building's structure intact.”

Gov. Charles H. Martin was in Medford for an event, but came back that night.

At the time, the bulk of public records were kept in the capitol, as well as a vault full of money. Some $3 million dollars in there were spared, thanks to firemen. Most documents made it but plenty didn't. That included some historical mementos from World War I, oil paintings of various governors and “treasured brass spittoons,” but among the major items saved was the first hand-written state constitution.

Damage wound up around $1 million, and a new capitol building was built and occupied some three years later. It's the one we see now – and it's apparently fireproof.

Investigations right after yielded no firm cause, with both arson and accidental being about equal possibilities. There was a rash of unexplained fires earlier that week in Silverton, Albany, Corvallis, Bend, and North Bend on the Oregon coast, but no connection was ever found. It remains a mystery.

That's another curiosity about the fire: the first one in 1855 that torched the capitol was never explained, either. A new one was built 20 years later – and that's the one that burned in '35.

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Andre' GW Hagestedt is editor, owner and primary photographer / videographer of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, an online publication that sees over 1 million pageviews per month. He is also author of several books about the coast.

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