CHAMPION, Wis. — While Wisconsin prepares to observe the anniversary of the most devastating fire in American history, a shrine looks to share its historic role in saving lives.

Several busloads of middle school students covered the grounds of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help in Champion, Wis. on Tuesday. 

They were there learning of Sister Adele Brise, who chief operations officer Don Warden said was visited by the Blessed Mother on Oct. 9, 1859.

“How many people get to come every day, spend every day at a place where the Mother of God stepped into time again and brought a message of hope?” he said.

The site was directly in the path of the Great Peshtigo Fire, a blaze that scorched more than a million acres of land and killed more than 12,000 people on Oct. 8, 1871.

Warden said families went to the chapel and prayed with Brise for safety as the fire raged on all around them. By morning, their prayers had been answered, Warden said, rain put the fire out. The entire area was charred, except for the chapel and the five acres of land on which it stood.

“The night of October 8th into the wee hours of October 9th when the rains came and put the fire out around here, and October 9th just happens to be the anniversary — the 12th anniversary — of the apparition of when the Blessed Mother appeared to Adele,” Warden said.

Warden now works to preserve the shrine, its land and history, so its story is never forgotten.​