Paris, Texas, has a really bad relationship with flames. In 1877, a fire nearly destroyed the town. And in 1916, a blaze did destroy the town, taking the city’s beautiful 1897 Victorian granite Lamar County Courthouse with it.

“The wind was tremendous. It got started and picked up and raged all the way through town,” says Bob Burns, a former Lamar County judge and historian, of the 1916 fire. The fire, believed to have started near the town’s railroad yard, burned hundreds of houses, he says.