While still employed by the Press & Dakotan in January, 1888, I had the tragic opportunity to witness the memorable and devastating blizzard that visited this section of South Dakota and Northern Nebraska leaving death and injured by the scores and resulting in great losses of livestock by the settlers.

It hit Yankton shortly after one o’clock in the afternoon. The weather in the forenoon had been mild and sunshiny. The writer went back to the office from lunch beginning his afternoon work at one o’clock. Shortly afterward the office became darkened so that electric lights were needed.

Glancing out the window, it was almost impossible to see across the street. Fine, floury snow was swirling in all directions, driven by a strong northwest wind. Business was largely suspended and the schools dismissed and the younger pupils escorted to their homes.

At that time the office happened to be caught short of coal. Draymen were not operating, and in order to get an emergency supply of fuel, a rope was stretched a half block to the railroad yards and a car of coal, where a basket was used to carry the coal to the office - one man keeping a firm hold on the rope as the snow was so blinding that one could not see where he was going.

When I went home that night, the storm was still raging full blast. I was wrapped to the chin with heavy overcoat, cap with earflaps pulled down and tied, and scarf tied about the head. Fortunately, there were fences around houses and residences at that time so I got my bearings, made a dive across the street to the fence on the other side of the street, and following the fence a block and then repeated the operation until I had reached the rear of the lot on which my home was located.

On entering the house, my wife could not see enough of my form to recognize who it was. I first peeled the snow and ice off my eyes and face, and then shed the other wrappings. The snow was so fine - like flour - and so damp that as it hit one’s body, it seemed to stick like plaster or wet cement, freezing at once. One can easily imagine what one would be up against out in the open with no fence or other object to guide him. Naturally, there were many fatalities and narrow escapes in our own vicinity, but also throughout all of Dakota Territory, and a great portion of Nebraska.

Our next door neighbor, who drove a pony livery team to smaller places in southern Dakota, started out that morning with a traveling man to take him to Scotland, then a small inland town, a number of miles northwest of Yankton. There was little but bare prairie along the trail to Scotland, only a few scattered pioneer settlers with small improvements, and no fences except perhaps those around his buildings and sheds and hay and straw.

The storm hit these two on the prairie about half way to Scotland. Tracks disclosed that they had traveled with the team of ponies as long as they could travel, and then apparently cut the ponies loose from the buggy and started out on foot, hoping to find a fence that would guide them to a cabin or a straw or hay stack into which they might burrow and keep from freezing. Their frozen bodies were found the next day after the storm subsided. The insurance man being much larger and stronger than his companion, his arms about the smaller man. (There were many details printed in the newspapers then, and in later years, about this great Dakota Blizzard, but to one who passed through it, there has been no exaggeration as to its ferocity.)