Each winter, those who live in South Dakota expect a few blizzards and several days of deep cold. They withstand these events by stocking their cupboards, staying home and dressing warmly. Imagine facing the danger in an un-insulated shack or sod hut throughout an eight-month winter with blizzard after blizzard piling up foot after foot of snow around and over every building and landmark. And running out of food, fuel and kerosene – with no visible roads and no place to buy supplies.
The new settlers in Aurora County experienced such a winter in 1880-1881. The first homesteaders had only arrived in 1879, followed by the railroad in 1880. It was a long, hard winter for those who found themselves isolated for months in barely adequate homes with rapidly diminishing supplies of food and fuel.
One new resident of the county, George Gibbs, wrote a colorful account of how he risked his life to keep his family warm and fed during this winter. In May of 1880, Gibbs, his pregnant wife Rachel, and their three young children arrived by covered wagon, along with the George Saville family and others, to claim some of the first homesteads in Hopper Township, just east of Plankinton. Needing money, Gibbs found work that summer breaking prairie for three dollars per acre and working for the railroad at four dollars per day. Before winter set in, Gibbs built a lean-to on one side of the Saville house so that his wife would be close to neighbors while he worked jobs away from home.
A surprise snowstorm on September 14 lasted four days, dropped two and a half feet of snow, and gave warning of the months to come. As soon as the snow melted, Gibbs left home for a week to clear three claims for others. With funds to purchase supplies, he prepared for the winter. Gibbs explained that he bought “coal and provisions enough as I thought to last till spring. I got coal, three hundred fifty pounds of flour, two bushels of cornmeal, a barrel of crackers, rice, sugar, beans, cornstarch, tea, coffee, etc. Dick was born the twenty-seventh of November, so you see there was need of that sixty dollars.”
A four-day blizzard with fierce winds and flour-like snow hit a wide area of Dakota Territory on October 15. This was followed by a series of blizzards that added snow to a depth of ten to twelve feet in some places. Nothing thawed until April. By the end, food, fuel and kerosene were in short supply. Desperate, people ground flour and corn meal in coffee grinders, twisted hay or cut up railroad ties and telephone poles to burn.
Gibbs, Saville and another neighbor, Vroman, once tried to go for railroad bridge timbers, but were forced to turn back when another blizzard struck. In describing the harrowing journey home, Gibbs said two of them would walk ahead, looking for the track, and then holler to the driver to pull up when they found the road. “One man alone could not have made it; it is doubtful if two could. Thus we put in the winter. We had to shovel snow from twenty minutes to two hours to get into our stables to feed our horses every morning.”
By March, provisions were getting low. Gibbs explained their situation: “There was no hope of a train. By hiring about five thousand men to shovel, they got a train through to Mitchell the last day of January and then gave it up. We had seven feet of snow. Saville and Vroman could not think of any way out, so I took the matter in hand.”
Worried about feeding his family, Gibbs hitched two mules to a sled, drove to Plankinton and followed the tracks to Mitchell. He couldn’t find “so much as a cracker,” but was able to buy ten bushels of wheat for a dollar a bushel. Gibbs related a conversation with some men from Mitchell watching him load the wheat:
“Why, you aren’t going to mill, are you?”
“Certainly, I am going.”
“For God’s sake, man, don’t go. You and your team will perish.”
“All right, I have a wife and some babies to get grub for. If I die trying, that lets me out honorable and nothing else will.”
One of the men offered to pay Gibbs with the bran and short if he would take another four bushels of wheat to be ground. Gibbs took the extra load and drove forty-five miles further on. “It was as solitary a road as the Sahara Desert. I arrived at the mill at night, got my grist ground the next day, and the fourth morning after leaving home, started back with three hundred and fifty pounds of flour, one hundred pounds of shorts, and the bran from fifteen bushels of wheat.” The shorts and bran would help feed the livestock.
When Gibbs left home, “The two families had two and a half loaves of bread, about a quart of beans, and perhaps a bushel of small potatoes. I was gone five days and there were twelve to feed.” Luckily, Gibbs survived his long and “lonesome trip.” Upon reflection, Gibbs noted, “If a blizzard had struck me in the middle of that forty-five mile stretch, probably I would have perished. A man appreciates home, wife, and children after taking such risks in their behalf.”
The trials did not end there. Gibbs suffered snow blindness for three days after returning home. He continued his story, “About three weeks after I got home the snow began to melt. After the 15th of April the whole seven feet of snow disappeared in four days, making the biggest flood ever known in that country, or ever will be perhaps. All the bridges on the railroad to the Mississippi went out and miles of track. We didn’t get any train through until the 22nd of May. “
Gibbs’ tale graphically portrays the dangers faced by the earliest residents of this county during that long, cold winter. Starving or freezing to death in their homes was a real possibility. Doing nothing was not an option. A man had to risk his life to save his family.
Note: George Gibbs’ memoirs are part of the Aurora County Historical Society collection. The winter of 1880-1881 is described in “An Historic Sampler of Davison County” by Bob Karolevitz and is the subject of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book, “The Long Winter.”
It Happened Right Here: The Long Hard Winter, by Ruth Page Jones. Published in the South Dakota Mail, Plankinton, South Dakota, January 16, 2014.
RPJ Histories - Ruth Page Jones 