In the years following the great conflagration, Chicago devoted many public occasions to the memory of the great conflagration, but the lesson almost all ceremonies took from the fire was the need to push ahead. A proposed monument was started but never finished--for lack of interest, as much as anything. Although speakers and journalists retold the story of the calamity each October, their main purpose was to marvel at the extent of the recovery and of the city's still limitless potential. As the decades passed, a dwindling few would wistfully recall the pre-fire days when, in their opinion, Chicago was a simpler and more civilized community, but they were all but drowned out by the ever-onward booster spirit. For those hundreds of thousands of newcomers who had staked their own fortunes on the city's future, Chicago's earlier years had little personal meaning, especially since so much physical evidence of it had been wiped out, first by the flames and then by the rebuilding.