About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
Sunday, March 11, 1888
In the years following, of all the things they might have argued about, people argued about the day it started. There were two camps: those who believed it started on Sunday, March 11, 1888; and those who were certain it started on Monday, March 12.
“I noted a reader wrote he knows the blizzard of ’88 started on the 12th, but I know it was the 11th. My wife and I were invited to her mother’s for Sunday supper. While there, it started to snow bad enough so Mother said we ought to stay overnight but we pushed for home. I can tell you it was snowing.”
Yes, it was. Even those who clung to the notion of the blizzard beginning on March 12 admitted there were 18 inches of snow on the ground when they awoke on Monday.
Sure, it snowed on Sunday, they said, but that was nothing; folks were not seriously discommoded. It was Monday, early afternoon, when the winds picked up and falling snow mixed with blowing snow renderedAer train, due in Pittsfield at 11:15 a.m., was caught and immobilized near Washington. Forty-seven passengers waited to be released. Other trains were stuck in Adams and Chatham. Some trains attempted to ignore the drifts and plow ahead (literally). The violence of plunging into the drifts broke rails and smashed ties into kindling.
All over the county, everything was frozen, including all forms of forward motion.
It was clear all businesses must close, but that was the beginning, not the end, of the problem.There was fear that the employees would not be able to get home safely. Employers hired stout horses hitched to large sleighs. As the wind shrieked and branches cracked, the horses lost their footing in the deep snow, sleighs teetered, and the passengers nearly froze if the journey was too long.
There was a great fear that disasters would snowball, that fire could follow in the wake of the blizzard. In the center of Pittsfield, crews worked tirelessly to clear hydrants and tanks of snow. The snow fell ceaselessly and the hydrants were buried again and again almost as soon as they were cleared. A span of horses was hitched to a sleigh and loaded with 1,200 feet of hose. Firemen slept in the forehouses and did shovel details.The police were equally alert.
At central station, Chief Branch, with shovel in hand, said ”I have done what I could and, if called on, we shall do our best.”
The weather was the enemy, formidable and uncomplicated by fires or crime. There was no need to watch for drunken loiterers on the street or rowdies or robbers. No one was out except for those unfortunates trying to get home without perishing in the brutal cold; those the police helped.
Police watches were mounted to aid travelers and the homeless. On the streets the temperature hovered at zero, forced lower by high winds. Blinding clouds of snow buried the 12-foot-high barber’s pole. The city held its breath.
It was Thursday, March 15, before it stopped snowing long enough so that “they succeeded in opening the road and the stage got through [from Pittsfield] to Lee.”
With daylight on the 15th came the “revelation of the immeasurable blockade the snow had created.”
At Berkshire Life the snow was measured at 15 feet. Drifts buried North Street. The side streets were choked with snow and people were imprisoned in their houses. Residents surveyed the situation and, rather than clear sidewalks from side to side, they shoveled tunnels through the drifts to reach their front doors.
They shoveled and marveled. They thanked their lucky stars for their escape and waited for the snow to melt. When it came there were rushing rivers and flooded banks.
Next: The great flood.
