Madras Pioneer / Submitted photoThe Madras Hotel in February 2011, before it was condemned. Police are still investigating the cause of Sunday’s fire.

Investigators have not yet determined what caused a fire that destroyed a 100-year-old Madras hotel early Sunday.

Shortly before 1 a.m. Sunday, firefighters were called to a fire at the Madras Hotel and Motel on the southwest corner of C and Fourth streets. Crews fought the flames through the night and into mid-morning, but were unable to save the three-story structure.

The hotel was not occupied at the time of the fire, having been condemned last year. The newer motel units surrounding the hotel building were not damaged.

Tom Jaca, assistant fire chief with the Jefferson County Fire District, said his department completed its initial investigation without making any determination as to the cause of the fire. Jaca said his department is assisting with an ongoing investigation conducted by Madras Police, Oregon State Police, and the Oregon State Fire Marshal.

Jarold Ramsey, president of the Jefferson County Historical Society, said the hotel was quite possibly the oldest still-standing commercial building in Madras.

Ramsey said although early records are scarce, the hotel is believed to have been built sometime between 1912 and 1916, after the arrival of the railroad in 1911. The hotel was originally located farther south, he said, but in 1924 the owner moved it across town to its current location.

Ramsey said though the hotel was “never a premium hotel,” the building had several distinctive features, including a stair-stepping roofline that dropped down toward the rear of the building, and a Moroccan-style stucco facade embedded with abalone shell.

Jaca said the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality examined the building’s remains for asbestos-based materials.

The DEQ check briefly slowed the investigation into the cause of the fire earlier this week, he said, and while the investigation has resumed, the building owner will need to contain asbestos when debris from the site is cleared.

Ramsey said the hotel is just the latest in a long line of historic Madras buildings destroyed by fire over the decades.

“It’s a shame, it’s too bad,” Ramsey said. “It subtracts another historic landmark from a town that doesn’t have very many.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0387, shammers@bendbulletin.com