In the end, it was firewater that saved the Historic Fourth Ward School Museum in Virginia City, Nevada from fire. That, along with a top-of-the-line sprinkler system that cost about $50,000 in the late 1980’s and a quick response from the local fire department.

  A small fire caused by the spontaneous combustion of construction materials could have destroyed the 131-year-old building if not for a fundraising campaign by Jack Daniel's Distillery, which paid for a sprinkler system. The museum, which from 1876 to 1936 served as the Fourth Ward School, educated generations of children on the Comstock during its heyday.

  Executive Director Barbara Mackey said the fire began in a room adjacent to one undergoing renovation as a waterproof, fireproof, climate-controlled vault to store the historic mining town's archives for use by students and historians. It didn't even burn through the floorboards before the sprinkler system activated and three sprinklers put the flames out before any damage could be done. There was very little water damage, Mackey said, since the room where the fire began used to be a home economics classroom, it had drain holes in the floor.

  The Jack Daniel's connection began in spring of 1988, when they pledged a percentage of the purchase of each bottle of Jack Daniel's products sold that month to go toward restoring the Historic Fourth Ward School Museum. The county, which owns the building, did some work on it in the 1960s and 1970s, but it wasn't until 1988 when the school became a museum that the restoration effort began in earnest. More than $3 million has been raised and spent on restoration so far, she said.

  The building contains items and documents from 1876, even a letter written from the battlefield of the Civil War to someone in Virginia City. But the greatest artifact is the building. Mackey said the financial loss would not even begin to describe the devastation she and others would have felt had the building been lost. "It's not just the financial investment; it has been all those years of blood sweat and tears and raising money and people working on it, Mackey said. It's very emotional."