As the spring of 1879 approached, Mother Nature as she is inclined to do, asserted her superiority over the best laid plans of civilization to inhabit a broad section of the West.

Drought had spread from the Rio Grande on the Mexican Border all the way across the plains to the Canadian border. The March 1, 1879, Salina Herald reported prairie fires all around the city. The barren ground was blowing to the extent that, “real estate moved considerably this week.”

Drought and wind plagued all who had come seeking their fortune or just hoping to start a new life in the “Promised Land”.

The winds of March 13, 1879, brought enormous clouds of dust that darkened the day into what the Salina Journal termed a “consistency of twilight.” Visibility diminished as buildings across city streets disappeared from view.

“The air was so filled with dust as to be stifling even within houses. Although the wind was almost a tornado, no serious damage was done to the immediate vicinity.”

Prairie fires broke out across the state. At Cawker City, Thursday, March 13, began “pleasant enough for the time of year.”

At about 1 p.m. a southeast wind shifted to a gale out of the west “blowing great clouds of dust through the town.” Carriages and light wagons were upset, and caps and hats were sent skyward in every direction.

By the time the wind shifted to the north the thick dust carried a peculiar bluish appearance that resembled smoke. The uncertainty was soon verified when the cry of “Fire!” echoed from the end of the street. Men and boys poured from their homes, dashing through the dense smoke.

To the north and east of town a chain of fire was roaring and rolling directly toward town. Buckets, sacks, and quilts were the only weapons available to fight the battle to save Cawker City as the brave men and boys rushed to face the hastening inferno. Firefighting became so intense that even clothes caught fire. Surprisingly no one was seriously burned.

After an hour of desperately fighting the fire Jim Hugh’s stable was saved even in the midst of stored hay and straw. The stable was the only seriously damaged building in town. Had even one shingled roof caught fire the town would have been utterly destroyed, as nothing could have stopped the wind driven flames with burning shingles flying through the air.

Describing the same storm as it swept south, the March 15 Wichita Herald noted winds that, “gave rise to fears of an approaching tornado.” The wind blew fiercely giving rise to a “black ugly cloud ... in the North about half past six, and in an incredibly short space of time grew in size until it enveloped and darkened the city in a pall of blackness.”

The dust storm was historic in nature. Nothing quite like it had been seen before, bringing the Journal to note, “People have just got through digging from the pores of the skin the dirt driven there by the furious dust storms which for several days since our last issue have been lifting this country ‘clean off its toes.’ Even sinners have stood some chance of being translated with such favoring gales.”

The smell of smoke brought crowds of men into the streets of Wichita, rushing through the darkness, wind, and dust “to arrest, if possible, the threatened danger.” Unlike Cawker City, the smoke in the streets of Wichita proved to be prairie grass and stacks of hay and straw that fortunately did not advance beyond the Kechi area north of Wichita,

To add to the general discomfort of the evening on that terrible day, the winds were described as “icy”, turning the night into a howling uncomfortable horror. The weather station at Washburn College in Topeka logged a change of temperature as the storm blew out of the northwest recording a 50 degree drop in temperature in a few short hours.

At Peabody the editor of the Gazette-Herald observed a temperature drop from 70 degrees to 11 degrees above zero “in a little while.” Although he offered his most illuminating observation in another part of the paper with an explanation of the origin of the big wind that had blown across the state on March 13, 1879.

“That big wind last Thursday night, was caused by the State heaving a big sigh of relief over the adjournment of the Legislature.”

The more things change the more they remain the same on The Way West.

“The Cowboy,” Jim Gray is author of the book Desperate Seed: Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier, Ellsworth, KS. Contact Kansas Cowboy, 220 21st Road, Geneseo, Ks. Phone: (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans.com.