Shelby County
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During the eighties many of the winters in Shelby county were unusually severe. There were many blizzards lasting for three days at a time, with stinging cold weather and biting winds. The roads were blocked for weeks at a time, and travel was frequently over fields by the side of the roads packed with snow, men taking down the barbed wire fences, a practice which the laws of Iowa then permitted, as indeed they do now, the right of the public to travel expeditiously and with safety being paramount to the usual right of the landowner to forbid trespass on his land. During these hard winters it was often difficult to get coal, and as corn was cheap (often about twenty cents per bushel) men burned ear corn, which made a very hot fire.

A reminder of those strenuous days came on January 27, 1909, when live stock owners of Shelby county lost thousands of dollars by reason of cattle freezing to death. The quail were largely wiped out by this storm. Even crows and rabbits perished.

Observer C. A. Reynolds, keeper of the United States weather records at Harlan, under date of January 27, 1909, states that there was a severe thunder storm on the afternoon of that date, turning to snow, followed by a severe blizzard the next day; that the electric and telephone systems were badly crippled; that there was no mail at Harlan for three days; that the blizzard was accompanied by a dust storm, the frozen snow and drifts being covered with a reddish dust.

Transcribed by Cheryl Siebrass, October, 2022 from the Past and Present of Shelby County, Iowa, by Edward S. White, P.A., LL. B.,Volume 1, Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Co., 1915, pp. 52-53.

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