Schoolhouse Blizzard

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The Schoolhouse Blizzard, also known as the Schoolchildren's Blizzard (or "The Children's Blizzard"), hit the U.S. plains states on January 12, 1888. The storm came unexpectedly on a warm day, and many people were caught unaware, including children in one-room schoolhouses.

1 The blizzard of 1888
2 The stories
3 Affected states
4 Other names
5 See also
6 References

[edit] The blizzard of 1888

The temperature dropped from around seventy degrees Fahrenheit to minus twenty (forty in some places) within just a few hours. It was accompanied by high winds and snow. The storm lasted from just after noon until early evening.

It is estimated that 236 people died that day. Travel was severely impeded in the days following.

Two months later, another severe blizzard hit the East Coast states; this blizzard was known as the Great Blizzard of 1888.

[edit] The stories

Plainfield, Nebraska: Loie Royce found herself trapped with three of her students in a schoolhouse. By 3pm, they had run out of heating fuel. Her boarding house was only 82 yards away, so she attempted to lead the children there. However, visibility was so poor that they became lost and all the children froze to death. The teacher survived, but her feet were frostbitten and had to be amputated.
Holt County, Nebraska: Etta Shattuck got lost on her way home, and sought shelter in a haystack. She remained trapped there for three days and died soon after.
In Great Plains, South Dakota, the children were rescued. Two men tied a rope to the closest house, and headed for the school. There, they tied off the other end of the rope, and led the children to safety.
Mira Valley, Nebraska: Minnie Freeman safely led seventeen children from her schoolhouse to her home, one mile away. The rumor she used a rope to keep the children together during the blinding storm is widely circulated, but one of the children claims that is not true. She took them to the boarding house she lived at about a mile away and all of her pupils survived. Many children in similar conditions around the Great Plains were not so lucky, as 235 people were killed, most of them children who couldn't get home from school.
It was the worst storm since 1864.
The Great Blizzard of 1888 which hit the east coast just two months later was much smaller in comparison to the Schoolhouse Blizzard.
Ted Kooser, Nebraska poet, has recorded many of the stories of the Schoolhouse Blizzard in his book of poetry, "The Blizzard Voices".
In 1967 a haunting mosaic mural by Jeanne Reynal was created for the west wall of the north bay in the Nebraska State Capitol building in Lincoln, Nebraska. It captures much of the mood and drama of the storm. The mural, executed in a semi-abstract style, portrays an incident that occurred in which a school teacher, Minnie Freeman, is supposed to have tied her charges together with a clothes line and led them through the terrifying tempest to safety.