Indications last night were that unless the wind shifted or heavy rain fell the disastrous forest fire which started Saturday on the west side of the Sourland Mountain....would ruin the wooded mountain side.
There are few houses on the side of Sourland Mountain at Somerville, near where the forest fire has been raging, but if not held in control the destruction of several small houses in the village of Posttown [later called Plainville, the site of the Carrier Clinic], at the foot of the mountains, including the farm of Judge Nelson Y. Dungan of the Circuit Court, Newark, was thought inevitable.
There was also danger that the flames would work there way around the mountain to the east side, in the direction of Flagtown, a small settlement with a number of houses and stores. Throughout Saturday night and all day yesterday 250 volunteers fought the flames, using tractors and teams in plowing furrows and making clearings. But in many instances the flames leaped across these spaces and with a fresh start, swept on. "Back-firing" also was resorted to, but in most cases this, too, proved ineffectual. The barn of R.C. Harr, a real estate man, was destroyed. Passengers on the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad [CSX], whose tracks are two miles from the mountain, viewed the fire from the windows of passing trains.
[The New York Times 23 April 1923]
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