Postcard from the Past: Windstorm

by Dick Perue

A terrific gale tears up sidewalk and turns over everything it could get hold of

Thus read the headlines in the July 19, 1900 issue of The Saratoga Sun, accompanied by the following article:

One of the worst wind storms that ever visited this valley struck Saratoga Sunday morning about half past nine o’clock. 

It could be seen coming for half an hour before it struck and looked like an immense wall of dirt. 

It lasted about 20 minutes and ripped up sidewalks, blew off a brick chimney, turned over outhouses and blew out window lights. It tore part of a sheet iron roof off of the building belonging to E.P. Andrews and carried it clear across the river.

The Fort Steele Stage, which was on the road for this place, was stopped before the full force of the gale struck them, and the horses were unhitched. 

W.M. Orville, who drives the Encampment Coach, says the wind tipped his coach back and over until the body of the coach was riding on the off-hind wheel, and the air was so thick with dust he could not see his horses for a time, nor get a good breath of air.

The windmill belonging to John Johnson was torn to pieces, and the wind literally blew large windows from Mrs. Dyers millinery store, C.P. Clemmons and John Mayden’s dwelling houses, the restaurant of Alfred Smith and The Sun office. One of the windows on the west side of the Presbyterian Church was blown out, and the interior was considerably damaged.

The halfway house between this place and Pass Creek was struck by the wind and hail both and was blown to the ground. It is reported the stable belonging to Curtis and Orville at Fort Steele was blown over. Considerable damage was done to other properties at that place.

This is certainly the nearest approach to a cyclone the people of this valley ever experienced, with the wind blowing at the rate of about 60 miles an hour. There was very little rain that fell during the blow at this point, but at different places it hailed and rained both. The temperature went way down during the storm, and it felt quite winterish.