Around this time 41 years ago, I was just starting back to classes for winter quarter at the University of Tennessee. Yes, we were on quarters back then. After the month-long holiday break, I was just a week into my studies when I came down with a raging case of mononucleosis. My boyfriend at the time, it turns out, did not just have a cold. I had to call all my professors to see if they would excuse me missing a few weeks of classes as long as I kept up with work. If not, I would have to drop the class. All were completely cool with it.

The previous quarter, my first, got off to a much better start for me. But just as registration was wrapping up in mid-September 1984 (we were a proper country then, there was no going back to school, ANY school, before Labor Day), Knoxville faced down one of the greatest conflagrations in its history.

It was Sept. 19, 1984. I was done with what I needed to do on campus before classes started and was headed back to Fountain City on my usual route, 17th Street to Dale Avenue to 275 North. Before I even got on the interstate, I could see the huge plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky. Once I was on 275, I could see the flames. Traffic going in both directions was slowed by the sight of the inferno. The ConAgra grain plant was on its way to absolute ruin.

The Security Mills (later ConAgra) grain elevator in the 1930s (McClung digital collection).

A little before noon, an explosion occurred in the 10-story, concrete grain elevator, sending chunks of debris into other buildings. Two more explosions happened roughly 20 and 40 minutes after the first. Though, amazingly, most of the employees on site safely evacuated, three in the immediate area of the first blast were killed and 10 others were injured. Cars and semi-trucks were mangled. It took the full weight of the Knoxville Fire Department to get the fire under control. The KFD was on site for days following monitoring for and putting out hotspots.

At the time, according to the AFL-CIO, the tragedy in Knoxville was 13th grain elevator explosion that year and the 370th since 1958, with 113 workers killed as a result. The value of the facility was estimated at just over $700,000. Once the flames were out, it was a total loss. For a time, the company resumed its warehousing operations from a leased building on Sevier Avenue, but never rebuilt on that site.

Security Mills ad from a UT program.

Though the facility had been owned by ConAgra for a decade at the time of the fire, most folks then (and now) still referred to it as Security Mills or Security Feed. It had been providing jobs, tucked between Baxter and Bernard avenues on the Norfolk-Southern rail line just east of the interstate for 65 years. One of my great uncles, James “Jake” Johnston, made a career there and was named president of the company in 1963. Its feed sacks came with instructions for removing the print so they could be reused to make clothes.  And then one day, it was gone.

Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.

Sources: The Knoxville Journal digital archives, McClung digital collection

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