The headlines in the June 22, 1885, Rochester Union and Advertiser newspaper read:  “Calamitous Conflagration in the Village of Ontario.”  According to the newspaper, a fire started on June 21^st in the upper loft of the stables belonging to the Clark Hotel which was located on the southwest corner of Main Street and Walworth Road.

An alarm was immediately sounded and every effort was made to subdue the flames.  Ladders were placed against the building and men from the town passed pails of water from man to man hoping to contain the fire.  [It would be 22 years before the Ontario Fire Company would be formed in 1907.]

Their immediate efforts failed, however; and the Clark Hotel, as well as a dwelling house and marble shop to the west of the Hotel, were lost.  Then the flames swept across the street burning the store on the northwest corner and on up the street consuming everything in its path up to and including the Freeman Hotel located where the old bank building now stands.

To keep the fire from spreading any further west on the north side of the street, town folk cut down branches wet with rain and piled them against the house just west of the Freeman Hotel.  They then put ladders up against the west side of the burning Hotel and pushed it east.

According to an eye witness, quick thinking by town druggist Mr. VanderVeer – who tore up carpets, watered them down and placed them on the side of his building – kept the fire from spreading west on the south side of the street.

By the time the fire was out – thanks to the timely rainfall – nine dwellings, four barns, three stores, two hotels, two sheds, the Post Office, one billiard saloon, two meat markets, two millinery shops, one barber shop, one shoe shop, one wagon shop, one marble shop and one Grand Army Lodge room were lost.  The total value of the loss was over $30,000.

While the cause was unknown, it was thought to be the work of an arsonist.