This is the story of a South Dakota blizzard rescue in 1913 taken from the handwritten version by Mark H. Whitney. He was there!

     Anyone who has lived in the West doesn’t need to be told what Western blizzards are like or what they can do. To those, however, who have always made their home in the East, the following narrative will, I trust, be of interest.

     The setting of the story is central South Dakota, and the time is the latter part of March 1913. We had had an unusually open winter; very little snow had fallen and the weather had been, for the most part, very mild.
Our home, as well as those of several neighbors, lay in a small valley protected by high hills on the East and West and Northwest, so we did not feel the full effect of the wintry blasts which came down upon us from the Northwest nearly as much as some of our neighbors who happened to live on the open prairie around us.
The day upon which our story opens began warm and pleasant and everyone seemed to feel that spring was just around the corner. However, about noon it clouded up and between 3 and 4 o’clock began to snow—great big soft feathery flakes. It continued to snow and about dark a strong wind sprang up from the Northeast. The snow continued to fall all night and sometime before morning the wind shifted around to the Northwest and it began to get bitterly cold. It was estimated that 18 inches of snow had fallen and the terrific wind had piled it into the most monstrous and fantastic shapes imaginable.

     There was no let up of the wind all during the day altho it had stopped snowing. We tried to get to the barn to care for the stock, but the fine powdery snow almost smothered us, so most of the chores went undone that day.

     A family by the name of Greenwood had taken a homestead and built a shack about two miles to the West of us. The shack was at the foot of a small hill about 20 feet high which sloped at a 45 degree angle down to the house; the land back from the top of the hill being, for the most part, level. The hill being on the North side of the house, made a perfect setting for the piling up of a huge snowdrift, and that is just what happened.
Mr.Greenwood opened the door on the South side of the house in the morning to find the snow drifted halfway to the top of the opening. He managed to get to the barn but soon came back, only to find that the snow, by that time, had drifted to the top of the door, and he was obliged to dig the snow away with his hands in order to get in. He finally got through the opening without taking so much as a shovel with him and closed the door. 
Not long after that things began to happen. About noon, Mrs.Greenwood telephoned one of the neighbors and was rather alarmed as the snow, by that time, had drifted above the windows, completely shutting off the light. She also remarked that she thought the storm was over as she could not hear it anymore, and it seemed to be warmer. The wind, however, was still blowing as hard as ever, although they didn’t know it.

     About 3 o’clock Mrs.Greenwood again called over the telephone, this time very agitated. She said the snow must be up over the top of the chimney as their soft-coal stove in which a good fire was burning only a few minutes before, had suddenly ceased to draw at all, and was sending out clouds of gas-filled smoke into the room. She said she hoped someone would come and rescue them soon. Then she exclaimed, “O, I think I am going to faint”, then dropped the receiver and fell fainting to the floor. The receiver, being off the hook, made it impossible to call them again even though any one of them had been able to answer.

     We held several conferences over the telephone during the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out ways and means of rescue, but no one believed he could face that driving blizzard for two miles—and live. Two neighbors did hitch a good team to a light sleigh and start, but when they reached the open prairie at the top of the hills, the horses positively refused to go further, so they turned around and went home again. Around 7 o’clock we thought the wind had moderated a very little, although the air was still full of whirling blinding snow and the wind seemed to blow it in every direction at once.

     Finally, four of us decided to make the attempt. We assembled at the home of our neighbor nearest the Greenwood place without much difficulty, as the hills broke the force of the wind more or less. We left about 8 p.m. armed with scoop shovels and a lantern. Our first difficulty was in getting to the top of the hills which rose to a height of 100 feet on a long incline. We encountered drifts all depths, and every once in a while would sink to our waists. Finally after much exertion, we reached the top where the ground was level, only to feel the full force of the wind like a slap in the face. Two miles of this grueling task, fighting our way across this trackless prairie without so much as a fence to guide us. Every few steps we were obliged to turn our backs to the wind in order to get our breath.

     We never knew how long it took us to negotiate those two miles. However, we finally reached the end of our journey. And what a sight met our eyes! Where the house should stand, there was not a sign of any building of any kind. Instead, there was a huge snowdrift 20 feet deep and extending at least 50 feet out from the brow of the hill. We were now confronted by our real problem. Where was the house and how were we to get to it?
It so happened that I had charge of a rural telephone system of which the phone here was a part.  As I had installed the instrument in the house, we went back to the nearest pole which, by the way, was about half buried in snow, managed to reach the wire where it entered the snowdrift. Here we began to dig our tunnel. Please bear in mind that all this time the wind was blowing as hard as ever and it was anything but easy to get a tunnel started. However, we finally got it going and tried to follow the telephone wire as best we could--until we lost it. I knew the wire entered the house near a window, so we dug in the general direction of that window. We took turns at digging, but it took a long time as you may know when I tell you that the tunnel, which we measured afterwards, was 13 feet long.

     We had almost despaired of getting to the house, exhausted and tired as we were, when the fellow who was digging at the far end of the opening gave a loud cry. His shovel had struck a large open place in the snow. His first thought was that the house had in some way caught fire and burned. Then on second thought we knew that couldn’t be, so he crawled through the opening. This proved to be the window for which we were searching, from which both sashes had been removed in an attempt to get a little fresh air.

     We found the Greenwood family all living which was more than we had dared hope. Mr.Greenwood was unconscious and had to be carried to the nearest neighbor’s about 1/4 mile. Mrs.Greenwood, after being taken into fresh air, was able to walk and the two small children were soon all right again. The gas was still very thick when we entered the room, which was half-past two in the morning. We measured the snow on top of the house and found that it was 8 feet straight down to the highest point of the roof.

     The next day all the family were feeling like themselves again and felt sure that they owed their lives to the fact that there was a telephone in the house, for, if no one had known about their predicament until the next day, it would have been too late.

     They never went back to live in the house again. Although the snow never piled up that way afterwards, they felt that one experience like that was sufficient to last a lifetime, so they erected another dwelling in a safer and saner place. 

© 2001 Nancy W. Vickers All rights reserved

The above is an excerpt from The Whitney Storybook:  Life on the South Dakota Prairie by Nancy Whitney Vickers of Hague, Virginia. For more information about the book, readers can contact Nancy Vickers via email ,