Fire Department

(Taken from New London Buyers' Guide/Hortonville Centennial, August 16, 1994. Posted with permission from the Press-Star, New London/Hortonville, Wisconsin.)

Since 1873, Hortonville has had a volunteer fire department, but for its first half century, people weren't the only volunteers.

The fire engine was horse drawn, but the village did not keep a team of horses for that specific purpose. So when the fire bell was rung to call the volunteers, any team of horses on Main St. was liable to find itself hitched to the engine and whisked away to a fire.

The Hortonville businessmen purchased the village's first fire department and Dite Collar was named the department's first fire chief.