On the afternoon of this day in the Old West, a tragedy struck Wisconsin. It was June 12, 1899 and the Gollmar Brothers circus had just set up in New Richmond. With the draw of the show, visitors swelled the town’s population.
Unbeknownst to the happy circus-goers, on nearby Lake St. Croix, a spectacular waterspout had formed. As the funnel moved to the northeast, toward New Richmond, three people were killed at two different farms near Burkhardt and Boardman. Shortly after the circus show came to an end, the tornado passed through the very center of town. “Only the extreme western edge of the town escaped damage or destruction. Because of the timing, about 6 p.m., with many people on the streets on their way home for supper, and because of the crowd in town due to the circus, more than the usual number were out away from readily available shelter. The scene was one of confusion and terror as people belatedly realized what was happening.”
Leveling a swath around 1,000 feet wide and 3,000 feet long, the tornado became the ninth deadliest tornado in US history. It leveled buildings—over 300 were damaged or totally destroyed—and stripped bark and leaves from entire groves of trees. A 3,000-pound safe was ripped from its mooring and carried a full block. The enormous amount of flying debris was responsible for multiple deaths in at least 26 families. Six of these families suffered four or more deaths.
Survivor Anna Epley, in her account of the event, A Modern Herculaneum, interviewed an eyewitness, who said, "A top-shaped cloud came dancing up along the lake; another mass or column of cloud came from the vicinity of Stillwater. These two clouds were merged together in a funnel-shaped column, or columnar mass, spreading somewhat at the top, and boiling or tumbling rapidly within itself. Thus agitated, it turned eastward, and skirting the hills south of Hudson and hugging the ground closely, it took a northeasterly course towards New Richmond."
Many terrified citizens saved their lives “by fleeing to the cellars in the few seconds warning time they had. However, sometimes this shelter was not sufficient. The O. J. Williams dry good store on the corner of Third and Main Streets proved to be a real death trap. People on the streets in front of it rushed into the store for safety with the result that the building held one of the highest mortality rates in the city. The bricks were sucked up by the tornado and hurled back down on the crowd in the cellar.”
A blind citizen, Henry Kane, reported the following to a reporter: "I could now hear a frightful roaring of enormous proportions and of unvarying intensity and volume. In the upper air above this, there was a tremendous bellowing of appalling magnitude, which gained in intensity and volume as it orchestrated up and down an irregular and variable tonal scale. From the center of the sound area there was emitted a pulsating or puffing sound, coming at regular time intervals that seemed to make the earth quiver.
"This sound would perfectly suggest the puffing in unison of a thousand locomotives, laboring up a steep grade. The heavy, pulsating puffing gave the entire sound mass a rhythmical effect. It were as if nature had for a moment colleagued with Satan to condense the pent-up din and tumult of hell into one vast, discordant symphony.”
Your characters may not have heard about the New Richmond tornado, but they’d have been familiar with the natural disasters, both from personal experience and from newspaper accounts. Even modern buildings are no match for the destructive power of a tornado, and towns in the Old West were mostly wood, with only the wealthier citizens able to afford brick. A tornado was the death knell of any town.
Sources
Sather, Mary. ""They Built Their City Twice"" New Richmond Heritage Center. Web. 18 Apr. 2010.
"New Richmond A Scene of Woe." The Carroll Herald [Carroll, Iowa] 14 June 1899. Google News. Web. 18 Apr. 2010. <https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=lR8oAAAAIBAJ&sjid=hAUGAAAAIBAJ&pg=4826,4650021&dq=new+richmond+tornado&hl=en>.
Coffman, S. M. "Destroyed By Wind And Fire." The Daily Argus News 13 June 1899. Google News. Web. 18 Apr. 2010. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=-HEnAAAAIBAJ&sjid=LgQGAAAAIBAJ&pg=5960,5841142&dq=new+richmond+tornado&hl=en
J.E.S. Hays
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