In the dark, morning hours of January 29, 1918, the sound of thousands of pounds of metal and ice shooting down the Ohio River shattered the quiet of the night in Paducah. The roar was deafening. It sounded as if the Great War itself had come to the quiet shore of this river town. It was heard as far away as Mayfield.
In the dark, morning hours of January 29, 1918, the sound of thousands of pounds of metal and ice shooting down the Ohio River shattered the quiet of the night in Paducah. The roar was deafening. It sounded as if the Great War itself had come to the quiet shore of this river town. It was heard as far away as Mayfield.
That morning was the culmination of several weeks of crippling, winter weather that constrained the majority of our nation and sent snow as far south as Texas. For most of the month, the temperature had plummeted until daily highs were only about 20 degrees. Snow stacked up as well. In fact, it became a daily occurrence with several days of blizzard-like conditions. Snow in Paducah is not uncommon, but it normally melts away within a few days of accumulation. With the cold temperatures that January, it kept piling up. One newspaper headline read Look What's Here Again in the Weather Forecast. By the end of the month, it was major news when it DIDN'T snow for a twenty-four hour period.
At first, the winter weather was a source of fun. The Ohio River froze over completely, which was a rarity. People walked openly on the ice, some even hiking to Brookport and back.
The accumulation of snow became dangerous, however. Depths ranged from 2 foot deep to "over your head" drifts. People soon became trapped in their own homes, and the biggest concern was getting coal, the main heat source for most houses. It was already an emergency in New York where people who were on the verge of freezing to death could see boats loaded with coal stuck in the Hudson River, just out of reach.
For Paducahans, coal shipments generally came by train which had very little trouble powering through the snow and ice. The city street department stayed busy, clearing snow measuring five feet deep on average. The deepest drift was located by Broadway United Methodist church and came in at twelve feet deep. Extra help was hired at fifty cents an hour, and horses with drags along with men with shovels worked hard to keep paths open.
Street car service stopped completely. Police officers regularly shoveled intersections. Jim and George, the last two horses in service at the Paducah Fire Department, were used by firemen to deliver coal to local homes.
Travel was treacherous. Homar Graham, a mail carrier on Paducah's Route 5, got his car stuck in in a snow drift on Mayfield Road. He waited for someone to come along to help, but all he encountered in the cold of his car was silence. He was discovered by a Mr. Bell in a state of semi-consciousness and was, according to Bell, nearly frozen to death. According to the paper, Mr. Bell used "old fashioned methods in bringing a frozen man back to life, and, with the aid of hot coffee, Graham soon regained his senses." Graham stayed with Bell overnight before returning home the next day.
Jim and George, the fire department horses, were also called upon to relieve stranded motorists. After the duo pulled the fire chief's car from a huge drift on Broadway, the department put out word that if anyone was stuck, they needed to call Central Station. "Let George and Jim do it," they said.
In another incident, a man was offered $11 to carry eleven trunks from a Broadway hotel to Union Station, which was located in what is now Littleville just off Old Mayfield Road. The man used a cart and a pair of mules, which would have normally been adequate for such a journey. The deep snow, however, proved to be too much for the mules. At about 9th and Jones streets, the team gave out, and the man started chucking trunks overboard. After resting, the man continued with just five of the trunks and eventually made it to the station.
A nearby resident telephoned police headquarters, reporting that the street was littered with trunks. The patrolmen arrived on the scene just in time to see the man returning from the station. They helped him load the remaining trunks, which he delivered. Word went out that if a job normally took two mules, plan on using four.
Relief came at the end of the month with slightly warmer temperatures and rain. It helped melt the snow from the city streets, but it created a dangerous situation on American river ways. All up and down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, massive sheets of ice broke apart and started to move, taking with it anything that was in the way.
Docked ships were ripped from their moorings and were swept away. Unmanned craft flew through the ice and water, slamming into one another. The worst of the damage occurred on the Mississippi between Cairo and Hickman. Many ships made their way to the Memphis area where they eventually sank. Men stood on bridges near Cairo counting and attempting to identify ships and pieces of ships as they flew by. Damages totaled in the millions. Ships around Paducah fared well, however, as the Paducah harbor proved to be a safe haven for the vessels docked there.
In a matter of days, life returned to normal as the ice melted and the river ice vanished. Snow, which was piled near manholes, was blasted into the sewers by fire hose. The street cars resumed service, Jim and George received a well-deserved rest, and the winter storm of 1918 went down in history as one of Paducah's worst.
Photos courtesy of the Market House Museum
