The Legendary Winter of 1886 – 1887
Editor’s note: This winter was felt most on the open ranges of the Montana prairie,but cattleman in the valleys and mountains of Southwest Montana experienced it as well.
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While Montana has experienced many “legendary winters,” no one cold season can top the winter of 1886-1887, which in essence ended the era of the open range and transformed the cattle business.
Montana holds the record for the coldest temperature ever documented in the lower 48 … 70 degrees below zero recorded north of Helena near Rogers Pass in 1956. Quite possibly, in some high basin or out in the Missouri Breaks, this number was surpassed during the winter of 1886-1887. But whether or not it was colder than 70 below, that winter more than a hundred years ago remains imprinted in Montana’s history.
Sometimes you realize that to accurately write to describe an event is beyond your talents. So instead of painting a word picture ourselves of that memorable winter, we chose to use the words of Joseph Kinsey Howard from his book first released in 1943 titled Montana High, Wide and Handsome. Howard went to work in 1923 with the Daily Leader, the newspaper that would eventually be renamed the Great Falls Tribune. At the young age of 20 he became the paper’s news editor. He retired in 1944 and died in 1951. His writing is used with the permission of Yale University Press as it appears in our book, This Is Montana.
“The summer of 1886 was parching. Great fires swept the range; those cattlemen who could find new grass began the move through a haze of smoke which hung over Montana for months. The grass began to die in July and all but the largest streams and water holes dried up. Water in the creeks became so alkaline that cattle refused to drink it.
“That fall wild game moved early from its favored shelters in the Missouri badlands and hurried south and west. Birds which customarily remained all winter fled, too. The horses’ winter coats appeared earlier than usual … Nature had set her stage for the last act.
“Kissin-ey-oo-way’-o, the Crees said; ‘it blows cold.’ The Crees were the northern people, from the Height of Land; they had many words for cold, degrees of coldness, the effects of cold – but none more literally translating into speech the condition it described: in kissineyooway’o the north wind sang, softly at first, then rising to a wail and a howl. … It blows cold.
“It began November 16 … The gale was icy, and it had substance: it was filled with glassy particles of snow, like flakes of mica; it roared and rumbled. After the first day the tonal pitch rose: from a roar it became a moan, then a scream. The snow rode the wind, it thrust forward fiercely and slashed like a knife; no garment or hide could withstand it. The gale piled it into glacial drifts; when cow or horse stumbled into them the flesh on its legs was sheared to the bone.
“Now suddenly there appeared white owls of the Arctic. The cattlemen had never seen them before; but the Indians and the Metis knew them – and like the beasts and birds, they fled south … Slowly the temperature moderated. The stockmen prayed for what the Indians called ‘the black wind’ from the arch of black cloud on the western horizon from which it emerged; but it was too early in the season for the chinook. The drifts dwindled but did not disappear; they spread, crusting the range.
“In December there were two more blizzards.
“January is the Moon of Cold-Exploding-Trees. On the ninth day of that month it snowed without an instant’s interruption for sixteen hours – an inch an hour; and the temperature fell to 22 below zero. Intermittent snow continued for another ten days, with temperatures ranging from 22 to 46 below in central Montana; in some other sections it was 40 below day in and day out for more than two weeks.
“There was a respite of a little more than a week; then, on January 28, the great blizzard struck. For three days and three nights it was impossible to see fifty feet in any direction and ranch thermometers read 63 below zero. A sudden break in the cold and a wind shift gave promise of a chinook, but the storm set in again and lasted through February 3. A rider who dismounted dropped into snow to his waist on level ground.”
In his book Montana High, Wide and Handsome, Montana author Joseph Kinsey Howard depicted the vicious winter storms of 1886-1887 that beat the prairie and its unlucky inhabitants into submission. We continue his narration with the discussion of just how those residents fared.
“Cattle which had been pushed over the Missouri in the fall to the better grass on the northern range drifted back, for there was little shelter on the steppes north of the river. Half dead from cold and hunger, their bodies covered with sores and frozen blood, bewildered and blind in a world of impenetrable white, they blundered into the barbed-wire fences, crumpled against them, and perished. They were trapped in drifts above their bellies and stood erect until their bodies froze. They slid into air holes in the rivers.
“Cowboys donned two suits of heavy underwear, two pairs of wool socks, wool pants, two woolen shirts, overalls, leather chaps, wool gloves under leather mittens, blanket-lined overcoats, and fur caps. Before putting on the socks they walked in the snow in their bare feet, then rubbed them dry vigorously. After pulling on their riding boots they stood in water, then stood outdoors until an airtight sheath of ice had formed on the boots. Sometimes instead of the riding boots they wore moccasins and overshoes or sheepskin-lined ‘packs.’
“Thus prepared, they mounted and fought their way through the snow to extricate cattle stuck in drifts, tried to herd the dying beasts into sheltered ravines and head them off from treacherous rivers. They blacked their faces and eye sockets with lampblack or burnt matches to forestall snow blindness, or they cut holes in their black neckerchiefs and masked their faces, bandit-fashion. They strained and gasped as the icy air stabbed into their lungs and stomachs; they froze hands and feet, and many of them died. Their bodies, frozen stiff, were lashed on the backs of their horses and borne back to the ranch houses, to be thrust into a snowbank until a chinook came because the ground could not be broken for graves.
“For all this they got no medals, nor expected any. A cowboy’s job was to look after the herd; he was being paid for it – $40 a month. But hundreds of ranchers and riders underwent such hardships in that dreadful winter that they forsook the range forever, crippled in body and spirit.
“As the storms and cold continued through February, the tragedy of the range was brought into the towns. Starving cattle staggered through village streets, collapsed and died in dooryards. Five thousand head invaded the outskirts of the newborn city of Great Falls, bawling for food. They snatched up the saplings the proud city had just planted, gorged themselves upon garbage.
“Kaufman and Stadler, Helena cattlemen, wrote to their foreman in the Judith Basin to inquire about their herd. When the delayed stage delivered the letter, the foreman tossed it with a derisive grin to one of his riders, a young Missourian who had attained some bunkhouse fame for his pencil and water color sketches. ’Got a postcard?’ asked the young artist, whose name was Charley Russell. On it he swiftly sketched in water color a gaunt steer, legs bowed and head down, standing in a drift with a coyote waiting nearby. Below he printed a terse legend: ‘Last of Five Thousand.’ The card was mailed back to the Helena men without other comment.
“The chinook did not come until late March. Before the spring roundups were held to determine the extent of the disaster, the Montana Stockgrowers’ Association met in Miles City, scared but hopeful. ‘We are not here to bury our industry, but to revive it,’ said Joseph Scott, association president, whistling bravely in the dark. Then he went on to admit: ‘Had the winter continued twenty days longer, there would not have been much necessity for this association.’
“Sadly, the stockmen went home for the May roundup. They were in no great hurry to learn the truth; most of them, in short rides near their homes, had seen thousands of rotting carcasses on the plains. There were coulees and sheltered valleys which they could not enter because of the stench of decomposing beef.
“The popular estimate of the cattlemen after the roundups had been completed was a 60 per cent loss for the state, or about 362,000 head of cattle. More conservative were official figures, showing a 40 to 50 per cent loss. The drop in cattle on assessment rolls was 200,000, but this did not account for all the loss by any means, since thousands of cattle, including all the fall calf crop, had not been assessed.
“Nelson Story of Bozeman, who twenty years before had brought the first trail herd from Texas, lost more than 66 per cent of his stock. On the Yellowstone range losses reached 95 per cent. The Home Land & Cattle Co. had put 6,000 head across the Canadian border; 2,000 survived. James Fergus sold 1,500 hides from his dead stock for $2,000.
“Eastern and foreign investors had lost interest and thrust their companies into bankruptcy; the big herds had nearly vanished.”
A winter for the ages! We still experience plenty of rough spells when the winds coming from the north drop the mercury to 40 and 50 below zero and the snow piles into huge drifts, but so far, nothing can compare to 1886-1887.
