Brief History of the Front Royal Fire Department (as found in the Warren Times, June 2, 1998)

The Front Royal Volunteer Fire Department, formally organized on Oct. 4, 1892 as the Relief Fire Department.

The Front Royal Town Council instituded fire fighting in Front Royal on Dec. 19, 1870, when they aurhotized the purchased fire hooks and ladders.  Fire department historian Tony Marchi believes that a disastrous fire on Mill Street (now Water) led the corporation to realize the necessity of fire protection.

On January 5, 1871, the council appointed a committee to obtain prices of leather and gum buckets, and authorized construction of ladders.  Later in the year, the town purchased 24 buckets and six additional ladders at a cost of $24.

Town minutes of that era reveal that the town fathers authorized the ladders to hang in various fences throughout the town, and that anybody who removed a ladder and failed to replace it in its proper spot was subject to fine.  The fine was 50 cents an hour for each hour the ladder was missing from its location.

Buckets, ladders and fire hooks were the only equipment available to firefighters from 1870 until 1887.  The town, still in charge of fire fighting in the community, appointed a committe of C.A. Macatee and C.H. Beaty to purchase a hook and ladder truck from Holloway of Baltimore, MD., at a cost not to exceed $635.  The purchase of the truck led to the organization of Hook and Ladder Company No. 1 on July 29, 1887.  Private funding was used to purchase the unit.  That year, a fireman's bazaar was held on the Warren County Courthouse lawn, and funds raised were used for the truck.  The bazaar coincided with the arrival of the truck.

The department's history was interrupted briefly, following a fire which began at the feed mill on lower East Main Street on November 21, which destroyed an entire block of the town's business district. 

The Relief Fire Department continued until Dec. 7, 1922 when the entire department resigned.  Four days later, on Dec. 11, 1922, the fire department was reorganized and chartered under the same name, the Relief Fire Department.  the Relief Fire Department changed its name to the Front Royal Fire Department on Jan. 1, 1960.