On December 23, 1904, Sioux City suffered one of its greatest calamities when a fire broke out in the basement of the Pelletier Department Store on the southwest corner of Fourth and Jackson Streets. The fire ignited when a store employee lit a match in a Christmas toy display area of the basement floor to ignite a gas jet to illuminate the display. The head of the match flew off and landed in mounds of cotton that had been used to simulate snow drifts. The room went up like a torch, and the fire quickly spread throughout the multi-story building. The Sioux City Fire Department was neither manned nor equipped to suppress a rapidly spreading high-rise fire, whipped by wind gusts that quickly spread the flames to neighboring buildings. Two and a half blocks of the downtown district were gutted by fire. Only one person died in the catastrophe, but the loss in property was in the millions of dollars. Sioux City business investors lost little time in rebuilding the core business district.