1
00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:02,759
Speaker 1: Hate to say it, but winter is only just getting underway,

2
00:00:02,880 --> 00:00:05,600
Speaker 1: in fact this weekend, and we've already had some pretty

3
00:00:05,680 --> 00:00:09,479
Speaker 1: vicious snowstorms and freezing tempts. But winters in the past

4
00:00:09,800 --> 00:00:13,320
Speaker 1: have not only been colder and snowier than we've seen recently,

5
00:00:13,800 --> 00:00:17,320
Speaker 1: Folks a century or two ago had way fewer resources

6
00:00:17,360 --> 00:00:20,840
Speaker 1: to deal with it all. I'm Patty Steele surviving forty

7
00:00:20,880 --> 00:00:24,920
Speaker 1: five degrees below zero and twenty five foot snow drifts

8
00:00:25,160 --> 00:00:29,600
Speaker 1: with no snowplows or central heat. That's next on the backstory.

9
00:00:33,800 --> 00:00:37,280
Speaker 1: We're back with the backstory. Everybody talks about the weather,

10
00:00:37,400 --> 00:00:41,000
Speaker 1: but nobody does anything about it. That's a quote usually

11
00:00:41,040 --> 00:00:44,560
Speaker 1: attributed to Mark Twain, but was probably from another writer,

12
00:00:44,840 --> 00:00:47,200
Speaker 1: Charles Warner, who worked with Twain and was a pal

13
00:00:47,960 --> 00:00:51,040
Speaker 1: either way. We all complain when it's too hot or

14
00:00:51,159 --> 00:00:55,880
Speaker 1: this time of year too cold, but imagine a time

15
00:00:56,000 --> 00:00:58,920
Speaker 1: when it was way colder and there was no central heat,

16
00:00:59,240 --> 00:01:02,800
Speaker 1: no snowplows, and really no stores to run to last

17
00:01:02,840 --> 00:01:05,280
Speaker 1: minute to stock up on all the stuff we weirdly

18
00:01:05,319 --> 00:01:08,960
Speaker 1: think we need during a snowstorm, like milk, bread, eggs,

19
00:01:09,040 --> 00:01:12,440
Speaker 1: ice cream, and plenty of junk food. All right, let's

20
00:01:12,480 --> 00:01:14,400
Speaker 1: go back to the winter of eighteen oh four and

21
00:01:14,480 --> 00:01:18,759
Speaker 1: eighteen oh five. It was unbearably cold across the country.

22
00:01:19,280 --> 00:01:22,440
Speaker 1: It started out with the Great Snow Hurricane. It was

23
00:01:22,480 --> 00:01:26,520
Speaker 1: an unusual tropical storm that dumped tons of snow and

24
00:01:26,560 --> 00:01:30,280
Speaker 1: broad devastation to New England in October of eighteen oh four,

25
00:01:30,760 --> 00:01:33,800
Speaker 1: leading up to the deep winter. Then there was an

26
00:01:33,840 --> 00:01:38,320
Speaker 1: early brutal cold snap in mid December in Washington, d c.

27
00:01:38,560 --> 00:01:42,560
Speaker 1: The Potomac River froze solid. There was a massive snowfall

28
00:01:42,600 --> 00:01:46,560
Speaker 1: in New York City sixty inches, with snow drifts fifteen

29
00:01:46,600 --> 00:01:50,600
Speaker 1: to twenty feet high. Temperatures across the Mid Atlantic were

30
00:01:50,840 --> 00:01:54,720
Speaker 1: constantly every day below zero. In the West, the cold

31
00:01:54,840 --> 00:01:57,600
Speaker 1: was a killer. In North Dakota, it got down to

32
00:01:57,720 --> 00:02:01,480
Speaker 1: forty five degrees below zero this very week in eighteen

33
00:02:01,520 --> 00:02:05,559
Speaker 1: oh four during the Lewis and Clark expedition. And again,

34
00:02:05,920 --> 00:02:08,680
Speaker 1: stop and think about how people had to deal with that.

35
00:02:09,280 --> 00:02:11,799
Speaker 1: No way to get through giant snow drifts, to get

36
00:02:11,800 --> 00:02:15,320
Speaker 1: to work, school markets, look in on friends and family.

37
00:02:15,800 --> 00:02:19,480
Speaker 1: Clearing the streets was a backbreaking job. There was some

38
00:02:19,639 --> 00:02:23,239
Speaker 1: horse drawn plows, but mostly they used guys with shovels

39
00:02:23,240 --> 00:02:25,280
Speaker 1: who would put it all in carts that had to

40
00:02:25,320 --> 00:02:29,040
Speaker 1: be pulled, as well as huge wooden rollers or cylinders

41
00:02:29,320 --> 00:02:32,119
Speaker 1: pulled by horses to compact the snow on the streets.

42
00:02:32,680 --> 00:02:36,840
Speaker 1: Getting around involved sleighs, again pulled by horses, as long

43
00:02:36,880 --> 00:02:40,080
Speaker 1: as the snow had been compacted. But here's the thing.

44
00:02:40,600 --> 00:02:43,920
Speaker 1: The idea that the city was responsible for snow removal

45
00:02:44,480 --> 00:02:48,160
Speaker 1: is actually a late nineteenth century to early twentieth century notion.

46
00:02:48,800 --> 00:02:51,000
Speaker 1: Even in big cities, it was the job of the

47
00:02:51,040 --> 00:02:53,640
Speaker 1: people that lived on each street to make sure their

48
00:02:53,760 --> 00:02:57,800
Speaker 1: road was passable otherwise sorry. Later on it became the

49
00:02:57,919 --> 00:03:01,120
Speaker 1: job of the police department to some what cleared the streets,

50
00:03:01,320 --> 00:03:04,360
Speaker 1: but mostly around city hall and in major shopping and

51
00:03:04,440 --> 00:03:09,239
Speaker 1: business areas. Residential areas again had to mostly fend for themselves.

52
00:03:09,880 --> 00:03:14,359
Speaker 1: Of course, all that cold and snow halted work, disrupted business,

53
00:03:14,720 --> 00:03:17,280
Speaker 1: and left a lot of folks with no income, no

54
00:03:17,400 --> 00:03:21,160
Speaker 1: ability to get to work, no pay. In essence, eighteen

55
00:03:21,200 --> 00:03:24,919
Speaker 1: oh four eighteen oh five was a landmark winter, one

56
00:03:24,960 --> 00:03:29,040
Speaker 1: of the coldest recorded in early American history. Then we

57
00:03:29,120 --> 00:03:32,840
Speaker 1: head to January twelfth, eighteen eighty eight. That day, a

58
00:03:32,919 --> 00:03:38,000
Speaker 1: powerful blizzard swept across Nebraska, with temperatures a wopping forty

59
00:03:38,040 --> 00:03:42,600
Speaker 1: degrees below zero. Here's the weird part. The temperature fell

60
00:03:42,760 --> 00:03:46,480
Speaker 1: about one hundred degrees in just twenty four hours as

61
00:03:46,520 --> 00:03:49,800
Speaker 1: the storm came with no warning. There actually wasn't a

62
00:03:49,840 --> 00:03:54,160
Speaker 1: ton of snow, but blinding wind speeds created whiteouts. Folks

63
00:03:54,200 --> 00:03:58,800
Speaker 1: talked about their tiering eyelids being frozen open. Two hundred

64
00:03:58,800 --> 00:04:02,280
Speaker 1: and thirty people died in what's been ranked as Nebraska's

65
00:04:02,320 --> 00:04:06,440
Speaker 1: most severe storm now. That blizzard is sometimes called the

66
00:04:06,480 --> 00:04:11,960
Speaker 1: school Children's Blizzard. One amazing woman named Minnie Freeman in Ord, Nebraska,

67
00:04:12,400 --> 00:04:15,560
Speaker 1: led her students through the storm, holding on to twine.

68
00:04:16,120 --> 00:04:18,560
Speaker 1: She took them to a shelter after the wind tore

69
00:04:18,640 --> 00:04:22,640
Speaker 1: the roof off the schoolhouse. Miss Freeman saved sixteen lives

70
00:04:22,680 --> 00:04:26,560
Speaker 1: that day, which was a lot considering many died right

71
00:04:26,600 --> 00:04:28,680
Speaker 1: at the doorstep as soon as they took a step

72
00:04:28,760 --> 00:04:31,839
Speaker 1: out into the below zero attempts and the wild winds.

73
00:04:32,360 --> 00:04:34,400
Speaker 1: Most of the kids were kept there for at least

74
00:04:34,480 --> 00:04:39,440
Speaker 1: two days waiting for rescuers. Another teacher, Lois may Rochi,

75
00:04:39,640 --> 00:04:42,919
Speaker 1: wasn't so lucky. She lost most of her kids before

76
00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:46,320
Speaker 1: they even stepped outside the schoolhouse. She tried to take

77
00:04:46,360 --> 00:04:50,039
Speaker 1: her remaining three, ages nine, nine, and six to a

78
00:04:50,080 --> 00:04:53,600
Speaker 1: farmhouse two hundred yards away, but they lost each other.

79
00:04:54,200 --> 00:04:57,719
Speaker 1: The children died, leaving the teacher crawling blindly through the

80
00:04:57,760 --> 00:05:01,680
Speaker 1: white out storm because of her horrible frostbitten feet. She

81
00:05:01,800 --> 00:05:05,440
Speaker 1: made it to the farmhouse, her feet fully frostbitten. She

82
00:05:05,520 --> 00:05:09,159
Speaker 1: later had to have them amputated. Years later, she talked

83
00:05:09,160 --> 00:05:12,279
Speaker 1: to a reporter about the experience and said, for years

84
00:05:12,320 --> 00:05:16,800
Speaker 1: afterwards gatherings in Dakota or Nebraska, there would always be

85
00:05:16,839 --> 00:05:20,920
Speaker 1: people walking on wooden legs, or holding fingerless hands behind

86
00:05:20,960 --> 00:05:25,320
Speaker 1: their backs, or hiding missing ears under hats, all victims

87
00:05:25,320 --> 00:05:29,000
Speaker 1: of that blizzard. That same winter also saw the Great

88
00:05:29,040 --> 00:05:32,159
Speaker 1: Blizzard of eighteen eighty eight in New York City. Well

89
00:05:32,200 --> 00:05:35,920
Speaker 1: over five feet of snowfell, with winds topping forty five

90
00:05:35,960 --> 00:05:39,400
Speaker 1: miles an hour. There were drifts as high as fifty

91
00:05:39,480 --> 00:05:43,120
Speaker 1: feet that's a five story building. Out at sea, two

92
00:05:43,160 --> 00:05:47,120
Speaker 1: hundred boats were either destroyed or grounded. On land, people

93
00:05:47,160 --> 00:05:50,280
Speaker 1: were trapped in their homes for weeks, and railroads and

94
00:05:50,320 --> 00:05:54,120
Speaker 1: telegraph lines were shut down. That actually was the impetus

95
00:05:54,160 --> 00:05:58,919
Speaker 1: to move rail tracks, electric and telegraph lines underground. The

96
00:05:58,960 --> 00:06:02,200
Speaker 1: New York Stock Exchange was closed for two days, and

97
00:06:02,279 --> 00:06:05,800
Speaker 1: a full two day weather related closure wouldn't happen again

98
00:06:06,200 --> 00:06:10,680
Speaker 1: until Hurricane Sandy in twenty twelve. So we can complain

99
00:06:10,760 --> 00:06:13,400
Speaker 1: about the weather all we like from the comfort of

100
00:06:13,440 --> 00:06:16,159
Speaker 1: our homes, but weather has been a lot more of

101
00:06:16,200 --> 00:06:19,839
Speaker 1: a challenge if you look back in time, I hope

102
00:06:19,880 --> 00:06:23,320
Speaker 1: you like the Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review.

103
00:06:23,560 --> 00:06:26,080
Speaker 1: I would love it if you'd subscribe or follow for

104
00:06:26,200 --> 00:06:30,200
Speaker 1: free to get new episodes delivered automatically. Also feel free

105
00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:31,760
Speaker 1: to DM me if you have a story you'd like

106
00:06:31,839 --> 00:06:35,080
Speaker 1: me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on

107
00:06:35,160 --> 00:06:42,440
Speaker 1: Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is

108
00:06:42,440 --> 00:06:46,599
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group,

109
00:06:46,680 --> 00:06:50,440
Speaker 1: and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our

110
00:06:50,480 --> 00:06:54,600
Speaker 1: writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.

111
00:06:55,000 --> 00:06:57,200
Speaker 1: Feel free to reach out to me with comments and

112
00:06:57,279 --> 00:07:01,200
Speaker 1: even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and

113
00:07:01,279 --> 00:07:04,279
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the

114
00:07:04,320 --> 00:07:08,040
Speaker 1: Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't

115
00:07:08,160 --> 00:07:09,240
Speaker 1: know you needed to know