This spring, Beacon Hose embarked on a project to renovate our firehouse conference. One of the motivations was to create a museum honoring our department’s history over more than 125 years.

Beacon Hose Co. No. 1 was formed on May 11, 1899. It was organized by 20 men in the cutting room of the Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Company three months after a fire razed all the buildings of the nearby Homer D. Bronson Company. Since then, Beacon Hose has become the centerpiece of our community, protecting our neighbors from emergencies and helping to create our unique small-town atmosphere.

Click here to read our entire updated history, complete with photos, videos, and much more. You can also scroll below to see our interactive timeline that covers the first 125 years of our department’s history, cobbled together through newspaper articles, photo archives, and past meeting minutes. Photos from some of our most memorable calls are also below.

We bid farewell to 2024 with our annual post featuring Beacon Hose’s top 10 photos of the year!

It was a year filled with lifesaving rescues, skillful stops, near-misses, losses of longtime brothers, expansion of our department, and celebration of our 125th anniversary.

Our members rescued 19 people and a dog from floodwaters in Oxford, quickly extinguished a structure fire on Highland Avenue, responded to several severe accidents on Route 8, paid our respects to “Uncle” Al Beckwith and others, welcomed a third ambulance to our fleet and a third Mulinski into our department, learned pet CPR, and threw Christian Hotchkiss high above the dance floor. Scroll through the photos for more details on each one.

Thanks to all of our members, neighbors, mutual-aid partners and dispatchers, vendors, and friends for a memorable 2024 — here’s to much health, happiness, and prosperity in 2025!