Remembering the Blizzard of 1888

To learn more about the Blizzard of 1888 and the individuals, families, and communities that were impacted by the storm Homestead National Monument recommends these books that provide further information and personal stories.

The Children's Blizzard - David Laskin
In All Its Fury - William H O'Gara
The Blizzard Voices - Ted Koozer

These books are avialbe for purchase throughout the Eastern National Bookstores located at Homestead National Monument of America. For more information please call [phone].

 

The Children’s Blizzard of 1888

Background

The Children’s Blizzard, the Schoolhouse Blizzard, the Schoolchildren’s Blizzard. It goes and went by many names, but whatever it’s called, it’s widely acknowledged to have been one of the most severe weather events to strike the Great Plains.

The blizzard hit on January 12, 1888, catching people off-guard on an otherwise pleasant winter day. David Laskin, author of The Children’s Blizzard, notes that by 1 PM the storm had “covered almost all of the Dakota Territory, the western two-thirds of Nebraska, and the northwestern fringe of Minnesota. Over the next two hours the front picked up speed as it spread inexorably over the most populated section of the prairie.”[1] Because it hit in the middle of the afternoon, it caught a great many schools in session across the states it struck. At each of these schools the teachers, “many of them barely older or more educated than the children they taught,” had to make the same fateful decision: Would they stay in the school with the children or try to get them home?[2]

In the end, the storm took between 200 and 300 lives, many of them children. It’s remembered in mosaic near the ceiling of the Great Hall in the State Capitol Building in Lincoln, it’s recalled in books and plays, and it’s an indelible part of our cultural memory here on the Great Plains. This weather event also led, in part, to the creation of the United States Weather Bureau in 1890.

 

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[1] David Laskin. The Children’s Blizzard. New York: Harper Perennial, 2004. Pages 145-146.

[2] Ibid., Page 146.