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    Historic Disasters in Southeast Minnesota
    Historic Disasters in Southeast Minnesota
    Historic Disasters in Southeast Minnesota
    Ebook154 pages1 hour

    Historic Disasters in Southeast Minnesota

    By Steve Gardiner

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    About this ebook

    Southeast Minnesota has regularly felt the wrath of nature.


    In 1890, a driving straight-line wind on Lake Pepin overturned the Sea Wing, killing ninety-eight people within minutes in the worst marine tragedy in Minnesota history. In 1940, a raging blizzard trapped duck hunters on islands in the Mississippi River and left motorists stranded across the region, leaving dozens injured or dead. Then, in 1965, flood waters of the Mississippi River and its vast network of tributaries kept area residents in fear for two months, shattering records for high water marks and destroying buildings and farmlands before receding and leaving behind damage that took years to rebuild.


    Local author Steve Gardiner examines these powerful natural disasters and their ramifications on the people of Southeast Minnesota.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateApr 11, 2022
    ISBN9781439674710
    Historic Disasters in Southeast Minnesota
    Author

    Steve Gardiner

    Dr. Steve Gardiner was the 2008 Montana Teacher of the Year and retired after teaching high school English and journalism for thirty-eight years. He has published numerous articles about education and outdoor adventures and is the author of seven previous books, including Mountain Dreams: The Drive to Explore, Experience, and Expand. He and his wife, Peggy, live in Lake City, Minnesota.

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      Book preview

      Historic Disasters in Southeast Minnesota - Steve Gardiner

      INTRODUCTION

      The three major events in this book—the Sea Wing wreck, the Armistice Day Blizzard and the flood of 1965—happened in July 1890, November 1940 and April 1965, respectively. They span not only a broad number of years but also a cycle of months on the calendar. They involve a variety of weather conditions: wind, water, rain, snow, cold, hail, blizzard and flood. While Southeast Minnesota isn’t the only place with such conditions, the weather is certainly a frequent topic of discussion in the area. These three tragedies, though they are beyond most people’s memories, are part of the regional history. The challenges these events presented to people living here and the stories of how people overcame those challenges are the foundations of many local legends.

      They are examples of the natural environment taking control and causing extensive damage to property and human lives. In two cases—those of the Sea Wing and the Armistice Day Blizzard—nature moved in quickly, taking people by surprise and making them react instantly to the danger they faced. In the other case, the Flood of 1965, nature moved slowly but relentlessly, forcing locals to endure days and weeks of anxiety and fear.

      While these are stories of statistics—of inches of snow, of feet of floodwater, of deaths and damage inflicted—they are also stories of human beings. These stories show how weather can make us feel helpless but can also bring out the best in our collective willingness to help others. The tragedies recounted here had a high cost in terms of dollars, injuries and death, as well as human emotion endured, but they also created change in terms of improved weather forecasting, new safety regulations and funding for the prevention of flooding and other disasters.

      They are stories of human tragedy that provide us with powerful lessons.

      PART I

      THE WRECK OF THE SEA WING (1890)

      1

      SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE RIVER

      It was supposed to be an afternoon outing on the Mississippi River, a chance to enjoy friends, music and a boat ride. Then, tornado-strength winds crashed down on Lake Pepin and turned the event into the worst marine tragedy in Minnesota history.

      Captain David Wethern, part owner of the Sea Wing, a 109-ton stern wheeler, usually used his boat for moving timber on the river, but on occasion he arranged passenger outings. He had advertised that on the afternoon of July 13, 1890, he would be loading passengers on the Sea Wing and on an attached barge called the Jim Grant. He planned to leave his home in Diamond Bluff, where he owned a general store, then make stops in Trenton and Red Wing before heading downriver to Lake City for festivities at the First Regiment, Minnesota National Guard summer camp located two miles south of Lake City. Plenty of the soldiers were from Red Wing, so family members and sweethearts were anxious to see them. Afternoon activities would include a band concert, cannon firing and soldiers marching in formation.

      Wethern took out an ad in a Red Wing newspaper, announcing, Hawkins full string band has been engaged to furnish the music and tickets for the round trip 50 cents.

      Temperatures had been warm, and an afternoon excursion on beautiful Lake Pepin seemed like a pleasant way to enjoy the day. The lake, the largest on the Mississippi River, formed thousands of years ago when the Chippewa River in Wisconsin dropped tons of sand into the Mississippi River, creating a natural dam that exists to this day. The dam holds the river, slowing it down to a negligible current and making it an ideal location for a Sunday boat ride. Any cool breezes off the lake would be a welcome respite.

      Camp Lakeview, the destination of the Sea Wing excursion, was two miles south of Lake City on the shore of Lake Pepin. Courtesy of the Goodhue County Historical Society.

      A crowd of finely dressed passengers gathers on the decks of the Sea Wing. Courtesy of the Goodhue County Historical Society.

      According to Jean Chesley in an unpublished manuscript in the Goodhue County Historical Society files, Captain Wethern, age thirty-seven, left Diamond Bluff at about eight in the morning with a crew of ten men. The Sea Wing and the attached barge stopped in Trenton and picked up 22 passengers, then gained 165 more in Red Wing. They enjoyed the journey to Lake City and the afternoon at the military camp.

      The day was intensely hot with low barometric pressure and, toward evening, threatening storm clouds began to gather, Chesley wrote. The boat had been scheduled to start back at four o’clock in the afternoon, but passengers entreated the captain to stay longer in order to prolong their pleasant visit with the boys at camp.

      In an article in the Ensign, the quarterly magazine of United States Power Squadrons, America’s Boating Club, Dean R. Crissinger noted: There was gaity and laughter among the excursionists, and there was dancing on the barge. Lake City had created a carnival spirit with popcorn, lemonade and hamburger stands. People were carrying balloons and a band was heard playing lively music. It seems that there was so much excitement over the visit to the camp that little attention was paid to the ominous weather situation that was developing.

      According to most reports, the Sea Wing was scheduled to return at 4:00 p.m., following a band concert. The festivities had been fun, and many of the passengers wanted to stay to watch the dress parade by the soldiers, which would be over at about 7:00 p.m. Wethern agreed, and in the intervening time, rain and wind moved in. Wethern waited an extra hour, thinking the rain would pass, before loading the boat and setting out for Red Wing at about 8:00 p.m.

      As the steamer departed, additional winds and some rain sent many passengers, especially many of the women and children, inside the ship’s cabin, a move that would soon become significant. The men gathered on the deck and in the barge Jim Grant.

      Other steamboat men had advised Wethern to hug the Minnesota shore, and he planned to do so, but he knew he would have to go around two points, Central Point and an extended point labeled on various maps Long Point, Sand Point and Point au Sable (Sand Point in French). As he rounded the two points, he changed his mind and angled across the lake toward the Wisconsin shore.

      Dr. Thomas A. Hodgson created this map of the route taken by Captain Wethern and the Sea Wing on July 13, 1890, showing the path of travel, the turn into the storm and the drifting after it capsized. Courtesy of the Goodhue County Historical Society.

      The wind was blowing up the lake, a little off the Minnesota side, I think, Wethern said in the Crissinger article. I held her for Maiden Rock Point to get her under the bluff and follow the bend. We were not quite up to the Maiden Rock Point when I saw the squall coming off the Minnesota shore. I turned the boat so as to meet the squall head on. When I was making the turn to meet the storm, she listed some, but rode up again after she got square into the wind. We ran that way straight toward the Minnesota shore for several minutes.

      An article in the Illustrated American of August 9, 1890, only three weeks after the accident, explained that while Wethern was making this move across the lake, powerful winds swooped in and took control of the boat.

      The article noted that the steamers that ply the upper Mississippi—and the Sea Wing was no exception—are not built to weather a gale. Owing to the shallowness of the waters near shore, the draught of the steamers is light; they are smooth-keeled, and their bulk and weight are almost entirely above water-line. Their engines are not powerful, and they present a huge surface above the water to resist the blast of a storm.

      Steamers were designed to move in shallow water, to avoid the sandbars and snags that plagued early travel on the Mississippi River. Some pilots claimed they could travel in as little as fourteen inches of water, and some said they could run a steamer with nothing but a heavy dew.

      In a 1930 article in the Minneapolis Tribune, Milt Davis explained the problems faced by the steamers working the Mississippi River, noting that during the time of the Sea Wing disaster, wrecks on the river were not a rarity. Many hazards awaited steamers, including snags, fires, explosions and, as in the case of the Sea Wing, storms.

      Snags waited like marauders for their victims, Davis wrote. They were imbedded in the river bed, while jagged roots thrust upward. If the keen-eyed pilot failed to read aright the little danger signals that ripples and shadows might cast, the boat would bear down upon the snag. It’s hull would be ripped and torn, and the helpless craft and its passengers would be in desperate plight.

      Then, as steamers, there was the constant threat coming from fires burning inside the boats. The boats were wooden, with what was called gingerbread ornamentation.

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