Fires along the Niobrara River

Fires in Brown and Keya Paha Counties in northern Nebraska

North central Nebraska is fighting three big fires in Brown and Keya Paha counties, along or near the Niobrara River. As I understand it, all of these fires were started by lightning from thunderstorms. Vegetation  is very dry due to drought, and high winds have been spreading the fires. Today, the temperatures climbed as high as 108° in the area.

The above map from the Nebraska Emergency Management Area shows the locations of the three fires. The largest of these, on the west, is the Fairfield Canyon Fire that has burned about 50,000 acres. The two smaller fires on the east are the Wentworth Fire and the Hall Fire. These fires are 50 to 60 miles north/northwest of where I grew up in northern Nebraska.

The news section of the Radio KBRB website reports that various agencies and organizations are providing support and assistance. The Central Plains Chapter of the American Red Cross, the Southern Baptist Emergency Relief Team, the National Guard, the Rocky Mountain Incident Management team, the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, firefighting crews from over 50 Nebraska and South Dakota communities, and other civic and religious organizations are all working in the area.  One of the roles of the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency is to coordinate these efforts to the best advantage.

The National Guard has sent water tankers and also some helicopters that can carry big buckets of water. The helicopter crews can dump the water onto the fire, or they can lower the buckets to the ground where the water can be used by firefighters. These aerial photos from the Omaha World show how the helicopters lower the buckets into the river to fill them with water.

I am not sure this link will work for everyone, but I am going to include it anyway. This is Lorie Olson's Facebook album of about 250 fire photos from the Fairfield Canyon fire. If you click on one of the little photos, it will enlarge, and then you can click on that photo to go to the next one.

My heart is touched by the Facebook messages of my Nebraska friends who live in the area. They describe how they are playing a part in a huge community effort to fight these fires. They are baking cookies and cinnamon rolls, donating bottled water and ice, lending their cots and air mattresses, and working in emergency shelters and kitchens.

This evening, I received an email from Carolyn Hall whose family owns the Hall Ranch where one of the fires is raging (the fire on the east edge of the map.). Here is her assessment of the situation: "They have backfired along the west, north and east sides of the canyon so if the wind stays in the south today it may burn itself out.  The big question is what happens tomorrow when the wind goes to the northwest??????? More troubling is the Wentworth fire which is out of the canyon and heading northeast.  That will really be a problem when the wind goes to the NW."

These fires are devastating people's lives in so many ways. It's not just grass that's burning -- it's people's livelihoods and futures. Please pray for rain for northern Nebraska and all of the drought-parched Midwest -- rain without lightning.

UPDATE: The fires were finally declared contained on July 28. Destroyed by fire: 75,000 acres, 14 homes, 42 other structures, hundreds of miles of fences, and an unestimated number of livestock and wildlife.

The Easter Blizzard of 1873

Deadly April snowstorm on the prairie

I found this account of the terrible Easter Blizzard of 1873 in a history of Seward County, Nebraska that was published in 1920. This account is part of a longer passage that was reprinted from W. W. Cox's earlier history of Seward County.

Seward County in Nebraska

I have edited Mr. Cox's prose a little, breaking the very long paragraphs-- and in some cases, the very long sentences-- to make them easier to read. In doing this, I changed some words and punctuation. Please see the original if you want to quote something from this account.

Nebraska in the United States

The spring of 1873 was very pleasant, and people had made gardens. Prospects were so fair for an early summer that the ordinary straw stables for stock had been neglected and permitted to become open, the sides having been blown away. In fact, all precatution and care for the protection of man and beast from the cold blasts of a winter storm had been forgotten.

On the tenth of April, a rain commenced to fall, the wind blowing mildly from the south-east, both continuing until the night of the twelfth. The clouds, thickening at times, were accompanied by lightning and thunder.

We were living in our twelve foot pioneer residence with two windows. On that memorable night of the twelfth of April, we were awakened by an unusual roaring of the wind. Glancing at the windows, we thought the moon was shining, but soon recalled the fact that there was no moon.

We got up and opened the door, and were almost instantly made aware of the source from which the disturbance and the light in the windows came. The wind had veered to the north-west and seemed to have the force of a cyclone, and the air was so full of snow as to produce a moonlight appearance.

In fact, the most terrifying blizzard we had ever witnessed was before our drowsey eyes in all the horrors that could be depicted. We did not tarry long to enjoy the panarama as the ruling elements seemed to suggest that we retire and shut the door.

This blizzard continued three days and nights without abatement for an instant. The doleful tones, ever present in our ears during that time, scarcely left us even when in the refreshing embrace of slumber.

And there was scarcely a minute during the seventy-two hours that an object of any dimension could be discerned ten steps distant. Two minutes exposure to the full force of the storm would cause the vacant places in a person's clothing to fill full of the celebrated (but not appreciated) "beautiful snow."

Several of our neighbors saved their cows, horses, and mules by taking them into their houses. We saved three out of four small hogs and about thirty hens by dividing our twelve-foot space with them. We did not bring these animals in until the second day, and one of the hogs died in fifteen minutes, after being brought in.

Charles Emerson, living is a sod house on a hill in L precinct, kept his horses in a dugout stable at the foot of the hill, perhaps six or eight rods from his house. The storm was so blinding and severe that he did not venture to go and attend to them during the three days.

After the storm abated, his heart almost failed him when he went to his stable and opened the door that he had carelessly left only half-closed. He found the interior packed full of snow and not the least sign that his faithful horses were alive.

He secured a shovel, and after digging a while, came upon the horses, both standing up. The snow had filled in so close around them that they could not lay down. The warmth of their bodies melted the snow sufficiently to give them breathing room, and both were alive.

This terrible storm raged during the 13th, 14th, and 15th of April, the latter being Easter Sunday, and would justly pass to history as the greatest Easter storm on record.

Source: Pages 24-26, General History of Seward County, Nebraska, by John Henry Waterman. Published in 1920 in Beaver Crossing, Seward County, Nebraska.

Other histories tell of blizzard winds that tore the roofs off flimsy homesteader shacks, exposing the occupants to the elements. Other settlers froze to death because they didn't have enough firewood on hand. Some lost their way between house and barn and wandered off into the blizzard. Others were caught traveling or hunting on the prairies and either froze to death or smothered under the snow. Thousands of livestock died, and a great deal of wildlife perished as well. 

After the storm, snowdrifts were fifteen and twenty feet tall.  Some settlers who lived in dugouts had to burrow through deep snowdrifts.  Hilltops were swept bare, but the draws were full of deep, hard-packed snow. The best of the spring grass, which the surviving livestock really needed, was buried under the snow for a long time afterward. Many bodies of both man and beast were not found until the snowdrifts finally melted.

Read more:
Text of a Nebraska historical marker for the Easter Blizzard of 1873
Out of Old Nebraska: April Blizzard of 1873
The Easter Storm of 1873
Google Books search for "Easter Storm of 1873"

The Elkhorn Livestock Company

One of my unsolved mysteries

About five years ago, I found an old seal on eBay. Or maybe I should say that I found a seal-maker. When you insert a piece of paper and squeeze the handles of this little tool, you get a tidy embossed circle that says "Elkhorn Livestock Company, Bassett, Nebraska" around the edge and "Seal" in the center.

You may remember that Bassett, Nebraska, is my hometown. I grew up on a ranch out south of Bassett. So when I saw this nifty device that was connected to the place of my childhood, I bid $5 for it, and after a few days, I became its owner. No one else even bid on it. It was meant to be mine!

I was very curious about the seal's history, but the seller had no information to share. He found the seal in a box of stuff that he bought at an estate auction in Minnesota. He didn't even remember whose estate it was.

I wrote to the Rock County Historical Society and asked if they knew anything about the Elkhorn Livestock Company, but they had no information, either. And  I couldn't find anything about the company on the internet. So with little hope of ever learning anything about the Elkhorn Livestock Company, I filed my questions in the back of my mind.

Then, a few months ago, I was looking at a 1912 plat book of Rock County, Nebraska, on Ancestry.com, and I noticed a couple of landowners south of Bassett whose names are similar to "Elkhorn Livestock Company."

An "Elkhorn Valley Land Company" owned 2920 acres, all in one piece, in the northeast corner of Thurman Precinct. And an "Elkhorn Land and Cattle Company" owned an adjoining 360 acres in Lay Precinct. If these two outfits were one and the same, they owned over five sections in total, one of the larger spreads in that part of Rock County at the time.

I also found a possible clue in a 1911 book of discontinued American corporations and securities. It says that the Elkhorn Livestock Company (the name that's on the seal) of Embar, Wyoming*, cancelled its Nebraska charter in 1909. Maybe the "Elkhorn" names in the plat book are different than the name on the seal because of legal changes?

Tonight, I searched the internet again for "Elkhorn Livestock Company" and I learned that the University of Nebraska at Lincoln has a document that pertains. Box 4 of their Mari Sandoz papers includes the following:

Item 174. W.B. Hodge to Mari Sandoz, 1937, Nov. 10 [frame 1037]
Regarding Elkhorn Livestock Company; the hanging of Kid Wade; Doc Middleton; someone claims to be Mari's sister.

Kid Wade and Doc Middleton are well-known names in early Rock County history, so I'm virtually certain that this letter has information about "my" Elkhorn Livestock Company.

I sent the UNL library an email asking how to get a transcript of the letter's text or a photocopy of it. The library's website says that I should get a reply within 48 hours, and I'm waiting with keen anticipation to see what they say. Maybe the story of the seal's first owner will be revealed at last.


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*Researching the Elkhorn Livestock Company of Embar, Wyoming led to a strange discovery that I'll write about another time!

Rowe Sanctuary Crane Cam, 2011

Experience the migration!

The spring Sandhill crane migration has begun again, and the Audubon Society's Rowe Sanctuary has its Crane Cam running.

Rowe Sanctuary is located on the Platte River in central Nebraska. Thousands of Sandhill cranes gather on the Platte before flying northward for the summer. It is one of the great natural spectacles of North America.

Right now on the Crane Cam, I can hear many bird calls in the background. The Platte appears to be running briskly. It has snow on its banks, and some chunks of ice are floating in the water. What a marvelous thing to see and hear those things while sitting at my computer in Christian County, Kentucky!

Facebook users can "like" the Rowe Sanctuary at this link. However, it would benefit the Rowe Sanctuary much more if you showed your support with a monetary donation, even a small one.

Thanks, Carolyn and Fred, for reminding me that its time to post this link again.

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Read more about Sandhill cranes in the Prairie Bluestem archives:
Sandhill Crane Webcam 2010
Sandhill Crane Cam 2009
Rowe Sanctuary's Crane Cam 2008
Sandhill Crane Webcam 2007

Warp's Review Book for Arithmetic

Preparation for 8th grade exams

Tonight I came across a workbook, Using Arithmetic in Everyday Life, that I had in elementary school. The workbook dates from my 8th grade year, 1964-65.

Our teacher was getting us ready for our 8th grade exams, and she wanted to be sure we could do story problems. This arithmetic workbook has 126 pages, and except for the explanations and examples, it is entirely story problems. I'm sure I found the problems tedious to solve -- they often involved two or more steps.

This book, Using Arithmetic in Everyday Life, was published by the Warp Publishing Company of Minden, Nebraska, and copyrighted in 1942 and 1957. Everyday life in Nebraska, for many students in those years, was spent on a farm or ranch. The author acknowledges that fact with word problems like these:

Suppose your father should test his seed corn and find that 12 out of 72 grains did not sprout. What percent sprouted? If he should plant 45 acres with this seed, how many acres of this field would not have any corn on them?

Mr. White's corn yielded 50 bushels per acre. He sold one third of the corn through a commission agent who charged 3%. If corn were $1.25 per bushel, what was the agent's commission. How much did Mr. White receive?

No authors are mentioned on the workbook's title page, but when I searched for "Warp's Review Books", I saw that Harold and Ruth Warp of Minden, Nebraska, are credited for writing earlier (1929-1930) workbooks. Student workbooks were available for 17 different topics in 1931, and the Teacher's Examination Review Books covered another 20 areas of study.

The primary goal of the Warp Review Books was to prepare students for the 8th grade exams. That's why they were written, and that's why our teacher had us doing arithmetic problems in one of them.

The 8th grade exam was still a big deal in Rock County, Nebraska in 1965 when I took it. The newspaper always carried a photo of the two top-scoring students with their teachers. (This was as much an honor for the teachers as for the students!)

I tried hard on the test, but the top glory that year went to Curtis Ratliff and his teacher, whoever she was, at the Bassett Elementary School. I don't remember who had the second-highest score.  I had the third highest score, so the extra practice in the Warp's arithmetic book may have helped me. I just should have done a few  more pages!

Sandhill Crane Webcam, 2010

Crane Cam at Rowe Sanctuary

Carolyn Hall of Bassett, Nebraska, sent the following link for this year's Sandhill Crane Webcam at the Rowe Sanctuary.

http://www.rowesanctuary.org/crane%20cam.htm

I'm writing this at about 9:30 p.m with the webcam running in another window of my browser. It is dark on the river, but I can see the moon and hear an occasional bird sound over the gurgle of the water.

Sanctuary volunteers run the camera in the morning and evening during the hours the cranes are active on the river.  The rest of the time, the camera is stationary. The Crane Cam will be running through April 10, 2010. 

The Rowe Sanctuary is located on the Platte River at Gibbon, Nebraska (southeast of Kearney, Nebraska). The Platte River is an important staging ground for Sandhill cranes on their migration north. The birds spend their days in the fields and marshes near the river. At night, they return to the sandbars of the Platte River, where they are safe from coyotes and other predators.

According to the Rowe Sanctuary website,

In the morning, cranes shuffle up and down the river waiting for the sun to pop up over the horizon. As the sun rises, cranes head out to feed and loaf in the surrounding fields.  During the day, cranes "dance" to relieve the stress of migration and strengthen pair bonds.  Cranes are very "social" birds and in the evening, congregate in wet meadows before heading back to the river for the night. (Source)

More:
► The Rowe Sanctuary has a Facebook page where you can post questions and comments and read the responses of volunteers.
► YouTube has several videos of Sandhill Cranes at Rowe Sanctuary. This one shows hundreds of cranes arriving at the river at sunset.

Credit:
Sandhill crane image from pdphoto.org.

The Winter of 1948-1949

A long season of deep snow and cold temperatures

I wasn't born until 1951, so I didn't experience the winter of 1948-49, but I've heard stories about it all my life.

My parents, along with my brother Dwight who was a toddler, were living on a ranch some ten miles south of Johnstown, Nebraska. The first major snowstorm hit in November of 1948. More snow followed, but around Christmas, it warmed up a little. My parents were able to get to town in the Jeep for supplies. They didn't get back to town again until sometime in late February.

Earl Monahan's Sandhill Horizons (pp.280-284, published in 1987 by Earl H. Monahan) also notes the break in the weather that allowed them to open the roads and get to town around Christmas. At the holidays, the snow was about a foot deep at the Monahan ranch, out in the Sandhills northeast of Hyannis, NE.

On Sunday, January 2, 1949, the Blizzard of  '49 moved in. By the next morning, the temperature was -4°F. and it was snowing hard with a howling wind that created white-out conditions. The blizzard continued through Monday and Tuesday.

On Wednesday, January 5, the sun finally shone again. There were huge drifts, and the wind was stirring the loose snow into a ground blizzard. The effort to locate and feed the cattle in the deep snow began.

Monahan wrote that when the wind died down, they had a few days of moderate weather. Then the weather went bad again -- starting on January 8th,  frequent snowstorms and extremely cold temperatures prevailed until the wintry assault finally slackened in mid-February. The February 7, 1949, edition of Time magazine reported that Wyoming, Nebraska, and South Dakota had 18 snowstorms in 27 days following the initial blizzard in early January.

The Monahan Ranch owned a TD-9 crawler, and it was a tremendous help in feeding the cattle during those long weeks of deep snow. They were able to plow their way to the herds, but the crawler had to be brought home and kept inside every night so it would start again. (The diesel gelled if it got too cold.)

Credit: Blizzard image from Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Operation Snowbound and Operation Haylift

Loup County is located in the Sandhills of north-central Nebraska, east of the Monahan Ranch and just south of Rock County where I grew up. My Loup County (NE) centennial book contains the following description of that terrible winter.

The Blizzard of 1949 hit Loup County like a rocket and all was at a standstill. Cars and trucks were immobilized by drifts ten to thirty feet high. In the surrounding countryside, cattle were frozen stiff in standing position. Farmers and ranchers were isolated. When the airports were finally cleared, the Army flew supplies and troops for "Operation Snowbound," a month long program to help suffering familes, ranchers, and farmers. Mom remembers planes dropped food and medical supplies to the Loup County residents that were snowbound in the Sandhills[, s]ome of whom never made it to town until spring.

Source: Story of the J.U. & Delpha Predmore family on page 123, Loup County - Taylor, Neb. Centennial 1993-1983. Published by the Loup County Centennial Committee, no publishing date cited.

When I was a college student in Missouri, I was introduced to a friend's father. Jim Gentry was a heavy equipment operator, who had helped construct the Alaska Highway during World War II. As soon as he heard that I was from Nebraska, he began talking about the Blizzard of 1949.

I don't know the story of how Jim got the job for Operation Snowbound, but in early 1949, he was sent to northeastern Nebraska to drive a snowplow and open the roads to snowbound farms. He worked from dawn to dark every day, and the farm families fed him and gave him a bed, wherever he was. Thirty years later, he still marveled at the experience.

Operation Haylift was carried out by the Army Air Corp. Airmen dropped bales of alfalfa hay out of airplanes to starving herds of sheep and cattle. Many had not been fed for weeks. A terrible number of livestock and wild animals perished from hunger, thirst, exposure, and injury. Some ranchers lost 50% of their herds or even more.

I found several aerial images of the snow-covered prairies in 1949 at the Life photo archive. An image search for "Blizzard of 1949" brings up many interesting snapshots and websites. There's also an excellent video on YouTube: "The Blizzard of 1949: A Nebraska Story".

The entire north-central area of the United States, as far west as Utah, Nevada, and Montana, had a bad winter that year. However, Nebraska was one of the hardest-hit states, and so it has more than its fair share of the snow photographs and stories from the Winter of 1948-1949.

Related articles on Prairie Bluestem:
Blizzard of 1949 Stories
Ready for Winter
Winter Memories
1952 South Dakota Blizzard Story

Blizzard of 1949 in the News

A bad winter remembered

The recent snows and severe cold temperatures have stirred memories of the legendary Blizzard of '49 and the siege of snowstorms that followed it.  Here are three articles that have recently appeared in the news:

The Nebraska blizzard of 1949
Think you've had enough? Area residents recall winter of 1948-49
Living History: Operation Haylift saved Utah cattle

Sod House at the 1901 Pan American Exposition

Sod houses, Nebraska cooking, and the indomitable Mrs. Bowser

In 1901, the Pan American Exhibition opened in Buffalo, New York. The fair was a huge and wonderful event celebrating the achievements and industries of America, the scientific frontiers of the new century, and the treasures of the world.

A sod house from Nebraska was among the hundreds of exhibits at the fair. It was located in the southeast quadrant of the fairgrounds, tucked between the Forestry building and the Indian stockade, (about halfway down the right side of this map.)

The Nebraska Sod House was a popular restaurant of the fair, and Mrs. L. Bowser, the restaurant's manager, was a former homesteader of the Newport, Nebraska, area. It was there that she lived in her first sod house. This bit of trivia is interesting to me because Newport is located in Rock County, Nebraska, where I grew up.

Big Thunderhead

Cumulonimbus over the prairie

We saw this big thunderhead about five years ago in northern Nebraska. We were camping at Smith Falls State Park on the Niobrara River. I stopped to take this photo on a very hot afternoon, as we drove back to camp from sightseeing in Valentine. We were glad this cloud was east of us, and not likely to turn around.

As I stopped along the sandy road and got out with my camera, I explained to the kids that this photo would be pure Nebraska -- a hayfield, a barbed wire fence, sunflowers, and a huge thunderhead. "Hurry up, Mom!" they earnestly replied.

I was using a film camera; I hadn't crossed over to digital photography yet. I scanned the snapshot tonight to post it here.

Later that night, it rained very hard, and some in our group got wet inside their tents. We heard them slamming car doors as they scrambled for dryer quarters. Our trusty Coleman Forester wasn't leaking, so we just went back to sleep.

I'm sure the rancher who owned the hay was glad he finished baling it before the rain. The bales shed a lot of the water, whereas all the hay would have been wet, had it still been lying on the ground. When he heard it raining, he probably just rolled over and went back to sleep, too.

As for us, we got up the next morning and broke camp. The plastic dropcloth from beneath the tent had a lot of wet sand and grass sprigs sticking to it, and the rainfly that covered the tent was a little damp. We dried them in the parking lot as we did our laundry in Valentine. Then we packed up everything properly and drove on to visit friends who live near Amelia (NE).

These are pleasant memories. I've been smiling as I type.

Related posts:
Landlubber
My Coleman Forester Tent

Sandhill Crane Cam 2009

Watch the Sandhill cranes at Rowe Sanctuary

Rowe Sanctuary's Sandhill Crane Cam is on the internet again this year, March 7 through April 8. Via the webcam, you can see and hear the great flocks of Sandhill cranes on Nebraska's Platte River as they rest and feed in preparation for the next leg of their migration.

Carolyn Hall, a retired lady who lives in my old hometown, Bassett, Nebraska, goes to Rowe Sanctuary every year as a volunteer guide for the Audubon Society. Hundreds of visitors come to observe the cranes from blinds at the river's edge.

In the morning, great flocks of cranes rise up from the river and fly out to the fields in the area to feed, and in the evening, they come back to the river for the night. It is a spectacle of nature.

Carolyn described the return of the Sandhill cranes this evening: "Great pink/orange sunset with thousands of cranes flying and it looked like landing on the meadows north of the river. The river is iced over except for a narrow ice filled channel."

Sleet, icy roads, and cold temperatures caused many people to cancel their tour reservations today, but the volunteers still kept the webcam going.

Carolyn will be running the camera on Thursday morning (March 12). She says that by 8:00 AM (CDT), there is enough light to get a good view of the river and the cranes. This morning in the cold and sleet, the cranes didn't leave the river until after 10:00 AM.

Blizzards of the Plains

Buffalo Bill's description of a genuine blizzard

In Buffalo Bill's book, True Tales of the Plains, he writes vividly of blizzards on the American plains. I'm not sure whether Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody, 1846-1917) wrote these words himself or if someone ghostwrote them, but it doesn't really matter. The passage is quoted below. As editor, I've divided the long paragraphs, left out a couple of sentences, and added some headings to make it easier to read.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I have had many experiences with genuine blizzards — a combination of snow-storm, cyclone and tornado — that sweeps from the Arctics down the American plains, even to the Rio Grande, in which neighborhood it receives the appropriate cognomen, the Norther...

Characteristics of a blizzard

A blizzard occurs at a time of winter when several previous snow-storms have left the earth covered with deep snow, when the new storm, driven with cyclonic force, is not only in the air, but the deeply bedded covering is agitated into mingling with cutting force, thus making the heavens and the earth both contribute to the conditions that inspire such confusion and terror.

The force of the wind, blowing at the rate of from fifty to eighty miles an hour, breaks up the snowflakes into an almost infinitesimal fineness, and this is driven through space at incredible speed, looking almost like a solid mass. So thick does it become, that no object can be seen half a dozen feet away, and, at the same time, the noise made by the rushing winds prevents the voice of the strongest-lunged being heard beyond half a score of steps.

This fine snow blown in the face succeeds in a very few moments in blinding the one caught in it, and he is only able to struggle forward, impotent to aid himself, except by locomotion, until either guided by instinct or accident he stumbles into safety, or goes down in utter physical exhaustion to despair, sleep and, perhaps, eternal oblivion.

How blizzards strike

These storms "sneak up" on the world as though they were some sort of Nemesis, following only to destroy. The morning before a blizzard is generally of the bright kind that inspires one to get about and be doing something. Farmers start for the towns to do their trading, ranchmen and shepherds ride out long distances to visit their corrals or sheepfolds. Later in the day, light clouds gather and obscure the sun, while a gentle fall of snow warrants no fear for the moment.

But gradually the clouds grow blacker, the storm increases rapidly, and before shelter can be reached the blizzard is on with all its fierceness and destructiveness to life and property. The temperature grows colder, and 20 to 50 degrees below zero is often recorded...

Why they're called blizzards

Singular to relate, the word "blizzard," though familiarized as an application to these peculiar storms in the West, must have been brought there by some ancient mariner or ex-man-of-war's-man, who recognized its descriptive availability when the old sea-dog struck this Arctic cyclone. The word "blizzard" was originally used as a sailor's substitute for broadside, to define the difference from a simultaneous broadside fire, to designate a continuous rain or hail in firing from the ship. It was about the year 1806 when it was first used as a descriptive term to apply to the fierce storms of our West and Northwest.

No other country or other place seems to be able to get up such a conflict in nature as to cause her to show her power in this chilling manner. About the best method of describing one of these atmospherical disturbances is to say that it is a snow-storm exaggerated some ten-thousand-fold.

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Quoted from pages 87-89 of True Tales of the Plains, by Buffalo Bill (1846-1917). This book was published in 1908 by the Cupples & Leon Company of New York. The photograph of Buffalo Bill is from Wikipedia.