The Daily Press and Dakotan of March 8, 1880, reported on page one that “A large amount of ice is running to-day.  River two feet one inch above low water mark, a fall of eight inches in twenty-four hours.”  The story went on to report that the river current had taken away a large slice of the river bank below McCully’s water tank; however, an ice gorge had fortified the shore against further immediate injury.

Ice gorging or gorging ice was common on the Missouri River and streams and rivers which flowed into the Missouri.  As the ice and debris moved downstream, it would often get caught on any solid obstruction to the normal flow of water.  When this occurred, water was held back, causing upstream flooding.  When the ice gorge finally broke, flash flooding would occur downstream.

Typically, the ice gorge was resolved when the ice melted.  With debris jams, the options were to take measures to remove the jam or wait for the debris to break free.  The use of dynamite unfortunately resulted in the death or injury to some of those trying to clear the river.  The loss of life was also attributed to flooding caused by the ice jams.

The worst flooding from ice jams occurred on the Missouri River in 1881.  That year, the Missouri’s tributaries poured a large volume of meltwater into the still frozen river.  Instead of the usual, gradual breaking up of the river’s ice, the inflow quickly dislodged the ice, resulting in the formation of massive ice cakes.  Near Yankton in the spring of 1881, one cake was observed floating down the river which reportedly measured ten acres across and was four feet thick.

These massive cakes flowed down the river and created ice jams around logs, sharp bends in the channel, or on top of sandbars and islands.  Once an obstacle blocked the flow of ice, debris and ice piled up behind the obstruction until the river became dammed.

It was common for the water to rise three, four, five feet or more in just a few hours behind these obstructions.  Once sufficient water and pressure had built up behind the massive ice and debris jam, the ice jam would break with an explosion which could be heard miles away.

In late March and early April of 1881, a series of these ice jams above and below Old Vermillion completely demolished the town.  At that time, the town was located on the river plain below the bluffs.  A series of snowstorms covered the Missouri River valley to a depth of four feet.  Residents in the valley spent the winter burrowing through the snow around their home like animals.

The warm weather and rain put the river into a mood that sent ice, debris, and water through the streets of Vermillion from March 27 to April 15, basically destroying and removing all the buildings from the valley.  Thirty people were drowned or crushed by the falling buildings.  In some places, the water was reported to be at least fifteen feet deep.  When the water receded from the valley, it was discovered that the main channel of the river had moved south to the Nebraska hills and the residents fled to the bluff to the north.

Between Yankton and Vermillion, the whole valley was flooded.  When driving between Yankton and Vermillion on Highway #50, think about having at least fifteen feet of dark, cold water above your car.  After the water receded, there were strange looking icebergs scattered all over the prairie.  They varied in size from sixteen feet in diameter to an acre or more.

The Press and Daily Dakotaian of April 8, 1881 reported:

“The gorge which is in a large measure responsible for this immense flood, reaches as far up the river from Vermillion to St. Helena (about eighteen miles), where the ice is piled up to a height variously estimated at from twenty to forty feet.  As near as can be ascertained, this gorge extends down the channel of the river a distance of fifty miles, and is one compact mass of cemented ice throughout that distance.”

The March 17, 1882, issue of the Press and Daily Dakotaian in a page two editorial made these comments about the inexperience with the rapid climatic changes, blizzards, flooding, and wind which the early Dakota settlers faced:  “A large proportion of the present population of Dakota are strangers to the climatic habits of this (to them) new country.  Beguiled by an open winter and a forward spring, they have scattered themselves over the prairies, remote from the settled haunts of civilization, and in most instances have neglected to provide themselves with adequate shelter or with food and fuel for a storm siege and its attendant snow blockade.  This they have done unthinkingly, because of their ignorance of the freaks of Dakota weather.  They do not understand the horrors of a prairie blizzard in a region where the people are wholly unprepared for such a visitation, nor can we give them any conception thereof in printed words.  They do not understand that in the balmiest early spring day a treacherous, devastating storm may lurk, which will spring upon them almost out of a clear sky and with the speed of a raging tornado.”

It was the duty of every newspaper in Dakota to sound the warning, that their readers would not be caught unaware.  “Winters like the one just closed are productive of the worst spring storms,” the editor wrote.  “Some of the most destructive blizzards have occurred in April after it had seemed that all danger of such an occurrence had passed.”

The story of the winter of 1880-81 in Dakota Territory is retold in The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder who lived near DeSmet.

 

Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory Times-Advocate on May 3, 2023