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Contact:
Cold Sky Publishing
POB 228
Negaunee,MI 49866
(906)-475-7942
email
Karl
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Below
is a sample of what you will find in the book:
December
27-28, 1904: “Worst Storm in Years”
A howling snowstorm
began over the western Upper Peninsula early on the morning
of December 27, 1904 “and raged with unabated fury for
more than thirty hours.” The snow, driven before a wind
that gusted at times to 60 miles an hour, piled “in
great banks that were a sight to behold.” Drifts in
Ironwood were estimated at 12 to 15 feet deep after the storm.
The blizzard piled on top of snow that was already 20 inches
on the level before the storm began, forcing people to “tunnel”
from their houses to the street.
In
the country, two young
men from Ewen
experienced a harrowing journey to Ontonagon
during the height of the storm. Stanley Brown and Leon Garvin
left Ewen Monday morning in a
horse and cutter. They stayed the night at a
friend’s camp and woke to the raging snowstorm. They
struck out into the blizzard anyway, heading right into the
teeth of a furious north wind replete with blinding snow.
They arrived at Rockland about noon, had dinner, and then
set out on the last 14 miles of their journey.
Travel
was slow and difficult as the snow accumulated rapidly. Finally,
their horse became stuck in a huge snow drift. It was getting
dark and the young men decided they could go no farther. They
freed the horse from the cutter and, fortunately, came upon
a barn, where they found comfortable quarters for the animal
along with a good supply of hay.
Brown
and Garvin now focused on their own comfort. After a 17-mile
ride through the ferocious storm, the pair was cold, wet and
exhausted. They approached the farmhouse near the barn and
found it unoccupied and locked. Since they did not want to
break in, they resigned themselves to a night with the horse
in the barn.
Following
a sleepless night, Brown and Garvin crawled out of their haystack
beds and both realized they were frostbitten in several places.
Once out of the barn, they also fully grasped their bleak
circumstances; all they could see of their cutter was one
shaft protruding from the snow, while the blizzard still raged.
The young men made sure their horse was well stocked with
hay and then they set out on foot for Ontonagon.
Walking
was extremely difficult through the mountainous drifts and
biting wind and snow. It took seven hours for the lads to
reach a farmhouse outside of the village. There they were
fed and took time to thaw out. After making arrangements for
getting their horse after the storm ended, they resumed their
journey. They arrived in Ontonagon during that afternoon and
found businesses paralyzed and trains stalled. Engines tried
to go to the aid of mired trains and became stuck themselves.
It took several days before plows succeeded in pulling out
the trains. Some stranded passengers on one of the trains
broke into a meat car. The express manager acted as chef,
cooking the meat on a small oil stove. Mail, which moved exclusively
by rail at the turn of the century, was delayed for two days.
Back in Ironwood, all streets were rendered impassable to
teams except for a few blocks in the center of town. At the
conclusion of the storm, the sidewalks were so deeply buried,
a newspaper reporter wrote that no one expected to see any
of them until April. While it is possible sidewalks remained
covered the winter of 1904-05, the rest of the season featured
near average snowfall and well-above-average temperatures.
No
portion of this webpage may be reproduced, reprinted, or otherwise
copied for distribution purposes without express written permission
of the author and publisher.
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