The Beautiful Snow: The Ingalls Family, the Railroads, and the Hard Winter of 1880-81 by Cindy Wilson

Author:Cindy Wilson [Wilson, Cindy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beaver's Pond Press
Published: 2020-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

Flooding along the Missouri and Big Sioux Rivers

Along the Missouri River, near Fort Pierre, the river had “risen about two feet” by the start of the month, and water was “running over the ice and breaking it all up.”735 The rising Missouri spurred residents of Pierre and Fort Pierre to move valuables to higher ground during the first week of the month, and by March 19, the river was reported to be five feet above normal.736 By the end of the month, the two towns were in full flood.

Papers across the region kept their readers apprised of the situation along the river. The Brookings County Press resumed operations just in time to report, “The railroad tracks are four feet under water and the inhabitants have been obliged to take to the hills.” The editor also shared that “about two thousand feet of the railroad track” had washed away near Pierre. The article did note one upside of the melting: “the beautiful snow is fast disappearing.”737

The town of Elk Point, approximately sixty miles south of Sioux Falls, also reported flooding in early March. “When the wind don’t blow,” wrote the editor of the Elk Point Tribune, “the sun warms up the tops of the snow banks a little. It is thawing considerably to-day; the streets look beer-y, and water is running into cellars in some localities.”738

The worst of the flooding, however, was centered around Yankton and Vermillion. Contrary to what one might expect, the melt began well to the north, close to Pierre. The rising waters flowing downstream ran into and broke up river ice that then flowed along with the current. This caused an ice gorge, or natural dam, that backed up the floodwaters. “At 11.30 Sunday night, Mar. 27,” wrote the Dell Rapids editor, “the Missouri river broke up at Vermillion. A gorge was formed two miles below the city, and in less than an hour the town was from four to six feet under water.”739 There is more about this cataclysmic event in the next chapter.

To finish the meteorologically frustrating month of March, let’s take a moment to enjoy the poetic joy expressed in the Canton Advocate, reflecting on the beautiful spectacle of the night sky:

A great deal of star-gazing was indulged in by our people last Thursday evening, but the occasion was unusual—not resembling such events as transpire when the air is filled with the fragrance of new-blown roses. It was Venus in all her brilliancy walking through the heavens in an easterly direction and coming in close proximity to the moon, which presented a strange and beautiful phenomena.740

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