TORNADO LEGACY: THE IRVING, KANSAS TORNADO IN 1879

 Editor's Note: This is the 3rd in my Kansas Legacy series. This one is a sneak preview of my upcoming book, Sound and Fury: A History of Kansas Tornadoes, due out in late 2009. The tornadoes responsible for giving Kansas the title, "The Cyclone State," were the Irving, Kansas tornadoes of 1879. Some might call them the "storm of the century." The 19th century, that is. What was known about tornadoes in the 19th century was minimal. These gave the weather bureau, then known as the Signal Service, a real education. There were two tornadoes, an hour apart, that tracked one after the other. They were part of a larger storm system that ravaged Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa on May 29 and 30, 1879. Most communities survived the weather onslaught. In many ways, Irving did not. Few people caught in the storm system's path had ever seen or heard anything like these tornadoes. Sergeant J.P. Finley, one of the founders of the Weather Bureau, then known as the U.S. Signal Service, thought these storms were so significant that he came to Kansas just to retrace their paths. He published his findings in "Professional Papers of the U.S. Signal Service, No. 4." Most of Finley's detailed report forms the basis for our knowledge of what happened to Irving.

To read the report now, the reader is most amazed at the detail, the minute details of retracing the path of the tornadoes and what they did to buildings, trees, and people. Much of it is not particularly fascinating reading. Some of his hypothesis are incorrect basedon what we know now. But since we knew nothing much before Irving, Finley was remarkably accurate.

The morning of May 30th dawned bright and clear, giving no warning of what was in store for the settlers. One citizen, however, reported in the afternoon that the wind blew harder than normal from the southeast, and the air become unusually sultry. About 4:00pm the sky turned ominously dark in the southwest near the town of Randolph, where a small tornado formed and caused damage to three farms. It followed Walnut Creek for about seven miles to Fancy Creek, where it destroyed a barn. Fortunately there were no casualties. A larger tornado then formed at Fancy Creek and destroyed the Weisdanger house. At that point, high winds were carrying 150 to 200 pound stones more than 300 feet. The tornado continued northeast where it hit the house of Adam Schwein. Inside were his family and three school children, all buried beneath the ruins. The father and mother were not seriously hurt, but the twister killed an infant in its mother's arms and falling timbers crushed their daughter's head. The tornado destroyed this home and family in an instant without giving them any warning or any opportunity to escape. The wind blew all of their belongings a mile away, some items dangling from tree tops. Most of the residents of nearby Randolph saw what was happening, and when several funnel clouds appeared they had time to take cover in their storm cellars and dugouts. Right before the storm, the air around Randolphremained death calm, but after the tornadoes passed, heavy rain and hail hit, along with cold northerly winds.

The tornado continued moving along North Otter Creek, where it unroofed a stone schoolhouse. The students had just left minutes before. The funnel was now 300 feet wide . After reaching the open prairie, the tornado skipped back and forth until it crossed into Marshall County, where it descended again and became a quarter mile wide. There the funnel destroyed four farmhouses. Gavin Read was inside his home, unaware of what was happening. The tornado had lifted his house twenty-five feet off its foundation. When Read opened thedoor, he fell, severely injuring himself. The twister moved to Game Fork Creek where it destroyed a cluster of homes, including George Martin's house. The falling timbers killed Mrs. Martin. Henry Wilson's log house was next in the path. It lifted the house, dashed it to the ground, then carried it away piece by piece. Thirteen people were in the house, mostly children. Miraculously, none were hurt. Now the tornado began to bear down on Irving. At the time, the community was home to 300 people. Finley described the tornado at this point as "demonic, whirling with most frightful rapidity, the intense black column would at times seem to level the whole bluff as it disappeared from view within the huge rolling mass of darkness."

On the outskirts of town, at the home of the Brumbells, all the tornado left were a few foundation stones and part of an old stove. Nearby, the Buckmaster house just completely disappeared. The family suffered horribly. The father was found lying on the ground by the foundation with fragments of his clothing still clinging to him. The tornado killed his wife and children instantly. As the funnel entered the town, the first house it hit was that of the John Gale family; the wind blew them outside and stripped them of their clothing. One of the daughters was wedged head first in the mud, her body sticking straight up in the air. The visual picture was gruesome, and newspapers described it that way all over the country. In a later reference to this tornado, it was noted that L. Frank Baum, author of the Wizard of Oz books, had as his main character a young girl named Dorothy Gale. At the time of the Irving tornado, Baum was a salesman who traveled all over the Midwest. No one knows whether he had ever been to Irving, but he could have read about it in any newspaper. Rumor states that Dorothy Gale in the Wizard was the young girl killed in Irving.  However, the closest connection between Baum, the Wizard of Oz, and Irving was the Gale family.  It is probably mere coincidence.  However, Baum supposedly had a fascination with severe weather.  Was it more than a coincidence?  Readers can only surmise. The Gallop house was next. The tornado lifted it in the air, along with the family of five, and carried it to a height of twenty feet, then twisted and dropped it. Miraculously, no one was killed. The tornado then moved on through the south part of town, destroying Captain Armstrong's new farm buildings---nothing remained standing.

Later a farmer found letters belonging to Armstrong seven miles northeast of town. Armstrong stated that everything was destroyed in a matter of ten seconds. After this storm disappeared to the east, a warm southerly wind blew over the town, accompanied by a soft rain. Then the sun came out, the warm rays soothing the terror-stricken inhabitants, who were witnessing firsthand the terrible destruction all around them. But hardly had they emerged from their cellars when there appeared to the west a cloud of enormous proportions; it covered the sky with a perpendicular front of inky blackness nearly two miles wide. The cloud looked so threatening that some people actually believed Judgment Day had come and they were offering up fervent prayers that they might be saved. With a roar "like a thousand cannons," the cloud covered the whole town. It was said to be a cross between a hurricane and a tornado. In an instant it swept everything from the earth, and the settlers experienced death in its most dreadful form. The power of the tornado destroyed in a few minutes what took the townspeople twenty years to build. The second twister hit Mr. Preston's place around 6:20pm, and he noted:

 "Our first sensation upon the contact of the storm were as though the building had been picked up, violently shaken, and then set down again. The next instant the doors and windows were broken in, the furniture whirled around the room and broken in pieces, and I, standing in the east room, picked up, whirled around, and carried through the folding doors into the main room to the west and laid upon the floor uninjured. ...Upon rising from the floor I found my clothing torn into shreds, but not a bruise upon my body. While in the act of taking hold of a door knob to descend into the basement, where I had sent my family, I found both hands benumbed as though asleep and I was unable to open the door. During the passage of the storm electricity ran over the walls of my house, throwing off sparks like an emery wheel, but of a paler color, but I attribute this effect to the particles of sand and plaster blown from the walls by the extreme violence of the wind."

At the Keeney home, the tornado blew three small boys out into a field and tore their clothes from their injured bodies. It carried their father, mother, and grandfather 200 yards, killing all three. Mrs. Keeney was upside down with her head buried in the soft ground. The funnel then lifted up the Sabin house, twirled it around several times, and shattered it. The family landed on the ground seriously hurt. The wind blew Frank Seaton, who had been at the Sabin's, through the top of the unroofed house and carried him forty feet, lifted him up again and rolled him another hundred yards, then he disappeared. At the Sheldon's, the tornado blew both Sheldons east of their house, critically injuring both of them. Rescuers found a sister Emma Sheldon dead, her body nearly unrecognizable. The storm moved on destroying the railroad depot and ripping the recently completely iron bridge to a mangled mass of steel. Several rail cars were sitting there on the track. They were rolled several times. It demolished a stone schoolhouse and lifted the heavy cornerstones from their base, dumping them into the center of the building.

By this time the roar of the tornado was so loud that when it struck the church, the women inside were unaware of the terrible destruction until, they emerged from the wreckage. Now the tornado appeared so enormous an eyewitness described it as being two tornadoes side by side. Finley defended this account when he examined the debris that could only have been caused by two tornadoes moving together. The W.J. Williams house was the next one destroyed. The kitchen, where several families had taken refuge, remained intact. The tornado killed Mrs. Williams, but her baby was still in her arms, alive and unharmed. After the storm reached the eastern limits of Irving and disappeared, all that could be seen for two miles was debris from the demolished businesses and homes. The ultimate power in this tornado was indescribable. It actually moved an 800 pound boulder to the top of a bluff and rolled it down the other side. Never before had such a feat been recorded. The storm blew many wagons and carriages away, and no one ever found them, not in pieces or as a whole. Someone found Mr. Keeney's pants with $1.60 and an account book in the pockets three miles away. The storm had an enormous pull. James Patterson noted certain oddities concerning objects and the tornado:

"on their extreme edges an upward pressure (formed), which acted so powerfully as to apparently reduce a man's weight about two-thirds. Small articles of every kind were observed rising from the ground from localities where no strong wind was felt, and finally drawn into the tornado cloud. It was necessary to hold your hat on, even when you felt no pressure against the side of your body. Shavings, straws, and other light objects would ascend in a straight line for a considerable distance and thenall at once dart with lightning rapidity downward to the base of the funnel cloud, then upward through its vortex and out at the top."

In this storm were many near misses. The first tornado in Irving hit at the same time the railroad ticket agent was expecting the Union Pacific train. It was on time, but the engineer saw the tornado and stopped the train outside of town. He waited until he knew where the funnel was going to cross the tracks, and then he quickly brought the train into town. Two minutes later the tornado passed over the exact spot where the engineer had waited out the storm. The first tornado reached the railroad track at 5:35pm; the second tornado, which actually hit the railroad depot, stopped the clock at 6:45pm. The exact timing told Finley that the tornadoes struck Irving about an hour apart. Storm number one was a half mile wide, but the second tornado was 1 1/2 miles wide. The second tornado had a deafening roar far louder than the first, and the first was described as that of a hundred trains. The first tornado took 1 1/2 minutes to move through town, the second took about three minutes. Persons who lived through these tornadoes said the air was filled with fumes not unlike sulphurous smoke; the sky had a reddish tinge bordering on purple, and the ground rocked as if by an earthquake. Some people said they saw several small tornadoes swinging back and forth like an elephant's trunk, taking away everything in its paths.

After the first tornado left Irving, it formed again, killing several more people near the towns of Beattie and Axtell. Beattie was a new community of around 150 people. Although the tornado was smaller by this time, its destructive force had not diminished, and it destroyed many homes and businesses. When the storm passed, an intensely cold wind and hard rain set in, causing more problems for those assisting the hurt and homeless who were huddled together in the ruins, shivering from the chill. At St. Bridget, the tornado destroyed an old schoolhouse and damaged the Catholic mission. Severe storms also hit Stockdale, Delphos, Waterville, and Wakefield. At Stockdale falling debris crushed a woman to death, but the baby she held was not injured. At Delphos a resident found two hailstones weighing 6 pounds each. At Delphos the tornado carried Mrs. Voshman through the air for 200 yards and lodged her against a barbed wire fence, killing her instantly. Thick black mud covered her body and splattered her hair and face beyond recognition. The Irving tornadoes left behind a legacy of terror, which caught the attention of scientists and the general public from coast to coast. The Scientific American of July 5, 1879, devoted an entire story to the Irving twister, to tornadoes in general, and made the following colorful remarks:

"Much of the country traversed has been but recently settled and in the absence of complete telegraphic communication...forty of fifty persons were reported killed...and many houses were wrecked at points so situated as to make it certain that no single whirlwind could have done all the mischief...it was a funnel shaped cloud with terrific rotary motion and irresistable suction leaving in its path a looped and sinuous line of ruin and death. Whatever came within its range was lifted bodily, torn to pieces, and scattered broadcast over the country...Everything was twisted and whirled into ruin. Houses are swept up like straws, heavy wagons and machinery are crushed and carried for long distances and the toughest trees are twisted like reeds."

The horror of these tornadoes was not forgotten by the settlers. Night after night following the storms, some of them never went to bed, but instead peered out into the darkness, waiting for another tornado onslaught. Every dark cloud brought the fear back to them, causing many unnecessary trips to the storm cellar. I can voucher for this. My aunt was from Irving, and forty years later, the midnight fears were still there. Irving did get hit again by a tornado ten years later, though it was nothing like this one. Finley filed his report and left. He would be back to Kansas two years later for another tornado outbreak, but it was nothing like this. Obviously, if he had not made the trip to Irving, the information we would know today is far less. Irving no longer exists. It was finally abandoned due to the construction of Tuttle Creek Reservoir in the 1950's and 1960's. Today the townsite is completely abandoned, except for a park and central mailbox, with a notepad, where you can leave messages about Irving. Many meteorologists have made the trek to Irving for the chance to stand on hallowed ground, so to speak. Offically 19 people were killed in Irving. A few disappeared and were never found. This storm gave Kansas the sinister title of the "Cyclone State" for decades. If Kansas was the Cyclone State, Irving was the epicenter. Many tornado outbreaks have occurred since, some worse than Irving. The Irving tornadoes made for sensationalist headlines. For a time, people left Kansas rather than to face the ultimate fear of being caught in one. The adverse publicity took some time to reverse. The Irving report was perhaps Finley's finest hour as a meteorologist. We can only imagine what he felt, getting off the train shortly after the disaster, and retracing the storm as elaborately as he did. Kansas is indebted to his details. His report eventuallyled to our widespread understanding of what causes tornadoes, and what residents can do to survive them. His hard work makeshim one of the founding fathers of meteorology.