Old Tige made its way back to the Dallas Firefighter’s Museum Saturday drawn by a team of horses.
DALLAS — The Dallas Firefighter’s Museum welcomed back a key piece of North Texas history Saturday.
Old Tige — one of the first steam engine fire apparatuses in Dallas — is back on display at the East Dallas museum after undergoing extensive restoration. According to the museum, the engine was built by the Ahrens Fox Engine Company in 1884, over 141 years ago!
The engine is one of only two 1884 Ahrens steamers left, per the museum.
Back then, the Dallas Fire Department used horses to pull the engine to fires, a hefty task given the steamer weighs 5,700 pounds. The museum says Old Tige served Dallas from 1884 to 1921, first in Downtown Dallas as Engine 1 and then later in South Dallas as Engine 6.
Early engines like Old Tige would heat water in a boiler, using steam pressure to create a vacuum, pump water from wells, rivers or other bodies of water, and shoot the water out of hoses to extinguish fires. The Dallas Firefighter’s Museum says Old Tige could pump 600 gallons of water a minute.
Fire engines have come a long way since then. Modern engines can carry hundreds of gallons of water and pump water at a rate of 1,000 to 2,000 gallons per minute.
Still, Old Tige humbly returned to its home at the Dallas Firefighter’s Museum as it would have in 1884, drawn by a team of horses with a fresh coat of paint.
