The Easter Blizzard of 1873

The same storm caught the Seventh Cavalry at Yankton, Dakota Territory. The regiment's first cars reached the town on April 9, 1873, and the men pitched a tent camp by the railroad east of town; on April 13 sleet turned to snow. With George Armstrong Custer ill in a half-finished cabin, officers sent the men to lead their horses into Yankton and ask the townspeople for room in homes, sheds and stables. Elizabeth Custer later wrote of thirty-six hours of imprisonment, frozen puppies and men whose fingers had to be amputated, in Boots and Saddles.

What the plaque says

The Easter Blizzard of 1873 One of the worst storms in Nebraska history struck without warning on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873. Rain began to fall in the afternoon and evening, later changing to snow. By Monday morning heavy, wet snow, driven before howling northwesterly winds, had cut visibility to zero. The storm raged until Wednesday, April 17, accumulating as eighteen to twenty-foot drifts in some areas. Hardest hit was east central Nebraska, where as many as twenty persons perished, along with thousands of head of livestock. Here in the thinly-settled North Loup Valley tragedy was narrowly averted. When the storm broke, Truman Freeland and young Newt McClimans were bathing in the river. Freeland reached shelter at a neighbor's cabin, but McClimans became separated. After the blizzard ended, searchers seeking McClimans's body found him safe in Freeland's dugout, upon which he had stumbled by accident. Although Nebraska's sparse population helped keep the death toll relatively low, the Easter Blizzard of 1873 probably caused a greater loss of life as a percentage of population than any other storm in the state's history. Garfield County Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Hartsuff State Historical Park — 6.7 mi
  A small infantry post of 1874 in the North Loup valley, built of local lime concrete on the raiding road between Lakota and Pawnee country, and kept nearly whole by eighty years of farming.

More markers nearby

• The Pebble Creek Fight — steps away
• Garfield County — 0.9 mi
• Railroad Turntable, 1887-1983 — 1.2 mi
• Kamp Kaleo — 1.5 mi