Kansas winters are often mild. Snow in recent years rarely stays on the ground for more than a couple of weeks, but then this is Kansas, and just about the time one gets used to the weather, a big change blows our way.

I well-remember a few long, cold winters, but when tallied over the years, the bad winters have been rare.

One of Kansas’ most severe winters swept across the western plains as settlers celebrated the New Year of 1886. In Dodge City, the festive atmosphere was enhanced with the certainty that the coming year would be as agreeable as the previous mild December had been. Little heed was taken of an ominous warning of a coming storm.

Railroad communications allowed for improved notification. A signal banner was raised over the court house, warning stockmen of an impending cold wave approaching western Kansas. In spite of a slight drizzle, everyone chose to ignore the signal flag.

As clocks struck midnight, a pistol shot rang out.

“… And then, as if that had been the signal, a solid line on Front Street, and a not much less number across the dead line (railroad tracks), let loose with guns, pistols, firecrackers and everything that would make a noise … representing the report of a fair-sized battle, and waking everybody within the city limits who realized that the glad new year had come without cause of a reasonable doubt. The hilarity of the occasion lasted until late in the night, or rather early in the morning…” Morning brought the realization that a fullscale blizzard had set in.

Temperatures plummeted to 18 below, as 60-mile-per-hour winds wailed over the frozen prairie. Cattle drifted with the storm as the relentless winds carried drifts of snow before them. Many an unfortunate animal froze in its tracks.

Three torturous days of brutal cold, wind and snow finally came to an end. As winds died and skies cleared, folks began to dig out. The deceptively warm day lured farmers away from home to check on neighbors. Cowboys set out in search of drifting stock, but cruel irony held one last card in its hand of death and destruction.

The storm returned with a vengeance, and as Lewis Nordyke wrote in “The Great Roundup,”“Any number of leather-lunged, six-gun-banging cowpokes couldn’t turn a herd when the crazed animals struck their blizzard gait … many an old boy mounted the pale horse in that storm.”

August Johnson was one of those “old boys” who didn’t survive the storm. Johnson was believed to be a line rider for the Smoky Hill Cattle Pool, an early-day version of a modern grazing association. Several ranching operations “pooled” their resources of cowboys, supplies and know-how to graze their herds together on a common range.

The Smoky Hill Cattle Pool straddled the Smoky Hill River for 30 miles. The range extended approximately 12 miles each way north and south of the river.

News of Johnson’s death traveled rapidly over the range. It was said that he had perished on Salt Creek while attempting to light a fire to warm himself from the blizzard. Word on the range was that “January first was the last of August.”

As it turned out, Johnson was not a line rider for the pool, and like so many rumors that were passed from camp-to-camp, his story may have been confused with another August Johnson who had been killed July 3, 1882.

The August Johnson of ’82 was a well-known cattleman killed by a bolt of lightning as he was riding with trail-drivers Mark and Gus Withers south of Dodge City. Johnson’s hat was torn to pieces, his undershirt was set on fire, a gold shirt stud set with a diamond was melted and the diamond was never found. Johnson was dead before he hit the ground.

Gus Withers lost an eye, but his brother Mark survived with only the plush being burned off the top of his hat. Cowboys never forgot the day with a saying that spread over cow country: “The third of July in ’82 was the last of August.”

From the similar reaction to their deaths, it is easy to see how the story of August Johnson being killed in the blizzard of 1886 became intermingled with the other August Johnson who was killed by lightning in 1882.

The true story of the man who froze to death in 1886 was actually well-known to settlers and cowboys alike, and was later recorded in the newspaper column “Pioneer Remembrances” by Mildred Cass Beason. Her columns were compiled and reprinted as a collection under the same name, Pioneer Remembrances, by the Gove County Historical Society in 1986.

Beason published a letter from D. P. Snyder of Evans, Colo., dated Sept. 1, 1938. Snyder was with August Johnson when he died and took the opportunity to “set the record straight.” There was more to be told about the terrifying January storm that was the last of August on The Way West.

“The Cowboy” Jim Gray can be reached at 220 21st Rd., Geneseo, KS 67444, (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans. com.