Firehouses are a fixture in virtually every town in the United States. In the early rural Sioux City community, it was nothing more than a shed where the primitive fire equipment was stored.

 Whatever shape or size, all fire stations possess the same feelings of waiting and anticipation. When you visit a station, one cannot help but keep one ear turned to the alarm bell or the call to "Turn out! Turn out!". It is easy to imagine the floor beneath you echoing with running feet of men hauling hand pumper with ropes, and horses trotting from their stalls into the traces of smoke-belching steam pumpers.  Or in a modern firehouse, internal-combustion engines wheeze, cough, and thunder to life as sirens begin to wail.

All firehouses, however humble or extravagant in design, are monuments to a breed of smoke-eaters, professional and volunteer alike, who look after the rest of us and are  unfailingly courteous to all visitors.