150 Years 1887-1901 The Dalles THE DECADES OF HISTORY PART THREE OF THE DALLES CHRONICLES TEN-PART SERIES. April 27, 2007 Page 2 SPECTACULAR STORM POUNDS AREA SEVERE WIND AND RAIN STORM Saturday Witnessed an Unusual Storm in the Inland Empire. A cloud burst, preceded by a storm of wind that almost rose to the proportions of a cyclone, visited, late Saturday afternoon a strip of country lying between Fifteen and Eight Mile creeks and extended from there in a northeasterly direction to the Columbia river. The amount of damage done is not yet fully known, but it must be considerable. From various sources we have gathered the following particulars, which may be modified or corrected by later reports: ¶ The warehouse of the Dufur flouring mill was blown down and wrecked. It contained a large quantity of flour and feed, which, happily, was not materially injured. Hail fell to a depth of more than a foot on the ridge between Dufur and Eight Mile, beating down to the earth hundreds of acres of standing grain and cutting off the heads of wheat and barley as if with a knife. The hail in places had not melted till twenty-four hours after the storm. In some places rocks were moved and piled up in heaps that weighed from a ton down. The fruit trees in one orchard of the ridge were blown out by the roots. Johnston Bros., of Dufur, estimate the damage done to their grain crop at $1500. Other crops were damaged to a lesser extent. Water flowed through the street at Dufur a foot deep. ¶ At Dry Hollow, between Boyd and Dufur, the storm struck a six-horse team, driven by a Warm Springs Indian. The leaders, a span of mules, turned short, broke the reach of the lead wagon and piled the entire team and front wheels of the wagon in a ditch some ten feet deep. The horses and mules were barely out of the ditch when a flood of water came rushing along that would have drowned the whole outfit.¶ A flood of water six feet in depth ran through the Frank Huot barn at Eight Miles, and with difficulty a number of horses in the barn were cut loose and saved. The chickens on the Huot ranch were swept away and most of them destroyed. The apples in the Drake orchard, half a mile this side of Eight Miles creek, were beaten off the trees by the hail and scattered by the wind and washed by the flood all over the road between the orchard and the creek. ¶ Later Saturday afternoon apparently the same storm struck the railroad track this side of the Deschutes and covered it from two to three feet deep with sand and rocks to such a distance that it took fifty men all Saturday night to clear the track. ¶ A teamster brings in word that a cloudburst struck him Saturday afternoon on the Sherar grade, this side of Deschutes, and that to save his team from being washed away he had to unhitch them and take them to higher ground. ¶ The peculiar thing about the storm was that it followed no well defined path. It was worst in the draws and hollow places; but apart from the few spots where it raged with most violence, the rainfall was more of a benefit than an injury. The Tygh ridge country suffered no injury that we have heard of, but had a rainfall that was highly beneficial. June 25, 1890. Incoming and Outgoing messages protected by Trend Micro PC-cillin program