COLORADO: Blizzard on the Prairie

The sun disappeared behind a grey overcast, and a great stillness fell over the eastern Colorado plains. After that a freezing wind rose, banged barn doors and snatched at the smoke from lonely ranch houses. It grew dark, and salt-like snow began hissing across leagues of sere buffalo grass. Then, for 48 hours, a blizzard—the worst in 33 years—moaned down out of Wyoming with nothing to stop it but fence posts and cottonwood trees.

As the prairies whitened, scores of thousands of chunky Hereford cattle turned tail to the storm, lowered their heads, and began to drift disconsolately before it. When they came to fences they turned, followed the wire. But some time during the second night, when the snow was belly deep on the flats and higher than a rider’s head in the drifts, they stopped. When the storm ceased and the cold intensified, herd after herd stood wearily with their breaths steaming, waiting patiently for death.

Across the plains, ranchers and cowhands tied bandannas under their Stetsons to protect their ears, pulled on sheepskins and mittens, and began a desperate rescue operation. Horses were helpless in the drifts. Trucks were useless except on cleared roads. But a caterpillar tractor with a bulldozer blade was worth its weight in gold.

The Hay-Bombers. At the 100,000-acre Tom Talle Ranch near Aroya, tough, greying Manager Elmer Ray rounded up three of the tractors. Then, with six muffled, red-eyed cowhands, he set out across the prairies, clearing a path for the cattle. It was heartbreaking work; they fought drifts by day, worked by lantern light after dark “caking” the tired stock with concentrated protein feed. But in a week they got 2,500 of their 3,600 fine Herefords into railroad cars and on their way to market.

Other stockmen waged similar battles. Railroads moved all available stock cars into sidings at Hugo, Limon, Boyero, Wild Horse, Kit Carson, Cheyenne Wells and Arapahoe. Few ranchers were lucky enough to get more than a small percentage of their cattle out of the drifts, and many distant herds had not eaten for a week after the storm. As a desperate expedient, the Keystone Ranch near Karval had Army bombers try dropping baled hay to some of its cattle. After that seven Army C-47s began hay-bombing on a larger scale. As the cold weather continued, airlines passengers reported seeing dead cattle, horses and antelope dotting the frozen prairies.

At week’s end, as a new snow storm began, 50,000 cattle were still in danger, hundreds of ranchers were still living on black coffee, whiskey and sandwiches, still fighting their battle against the elements. Army planes scoured the prairies, dropped skis and supplies to isolated families who tramped out distress signals in the snow. There were no reports from sheepmen, who follow their flocks for weeks at a time. But Coloradoans knew that eventually, as after every heavy snow storm, dead sheepherders would be found where they had fallen, with their storm-driven flocks.