Testing Modernity: Government and Technology on the Northern Plains in the Winter of 1948-1949
Between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries, Americans’ potential for security rose dramatically as government services increased and what historian Robert J. Gordon has called a “flood of inventions” that “utterly transformed life” were introduced. These changes were felt across the United States. In Searcy County, Arkansas, for example, the Atteberry family took advantage of increased federal largesse and new technology in the form of Social Security relief in the early 1940s and electricity in the mid-1950s. Hundreds of miles away, the first generations of settlers on the Northern Plains also enjoyed access to increasing government activity and to technological innovation in the decades after 1870. One place to evaluate the meaning of these changes for Americans’ security is to consider how these services and technologies affected the Northern Plains’ security against one of the greatest of several environmental threats that it faced: harsh winter weather. Winter on the Northern Plains, comprising the Dakotas, Nebraska, and the eastern parts of Wyoming and Montana, meant months with a high probability of intense cold, deep snowdrifts, and blizzards. This weather challenged the region’s ability to move people, goods, and information that residents needed for survival and comfort. Much changed in the decades leading up to the mid-twentieth century. Many people acquired radios and telephones, which facilitated the movement of information. Other technologies affected the region’s transportation system. Tractors made farmwork more efficient. Automobiles sped trips to town. Airplanes began to soar over the region. The means of keeping the transportation routes open changed, as well. Rotary snowplows, which allowed railworkers to grind and blow snow from the tracks instead of bashing or shoveling it, came into use in the 1880s. They were later adapted for use on the roads as well. And the acquisition of automobiles led to demand for snow removal on the roads, which states and counties met with fleets of plows powered by gasoline engines. Another enhanced source of government aid was the military and National Guard, which were more active in disaster relief in the mid-twentieth century than they had been in the late nineteenth. And, beginning in the 1870s, the federal government founded the Weather Bureau, which collected weather data and made weather forecasts.
The winter of 1948-1949 provided a test of just how secure these governmental and technological innovations had made the Northern Plains during the cold season. These innovations certainly provided the people of the Northern Plains with enhanced winter comfort and security. But the security they could provide was also limited. The region had not come close to taming nature. The winter was a harrowing experience, and people of the region turned to tenacity, imagination, and local cohesion, qualities they had long relied on to help them make it through the winters, to find security during this trial as well.
Winter 1948-1949 stood out even by the frosty standards of the Northern Plains. Although some of the region received heavy snow in late 1948, the worst was yet to come. On January 2-5, 1949, a vicious blizzard brought heavy snow and high winds of up to seventy miles per hour to much of the region. While this storm was the climactic weather event of the winter, high winds, cold, and additional snowfall went on for weeks, testing the region’s ability to handle long-term pressure. Summing up the year’s weather, the Weather Bureau’s Monthly Weather Review called the winter of 1948-1949 “the most severe on record in the northern Great Plains.”
Snow removal programs had mixed success. State highway departments spent far more on snow removal than usual. Snow removal programs were helpful in that they cleared many miles of road and kept them from being blocked all winter. One North Dakota woman noted two days after the road near her house was plowed that “people are getting out and cars are going by every few minutes. It seems almost like summer.” But state and county snow removal programs were also unreliable guarantors of mobility. Often, state highways and county roads were difficult to drive on if not totally unusable because of deep snow. These blockages often lasted from a day to several weeks. Wind frequently blew snow back onto roads shortly after they were cleared. Some roads were more likely to be useable than others. State highway departments outperformed the counties by keeping their roads clear of snow more of the time. One reason was that state highways were likelier than county roads to have been improved by being built higher than the surrounding countryside. This building method allowed the wind to scour the snow from the road. However, snowfencing deployed by the state highway departments was often ineffective because so much snow piled against it.
Snow blockages on the roads were a serious problem in winter 1948-1949. Some people went weeks without access to the outside. A northeast Wyoming family could not get to town from December 8, 1948, through March 21, 1949, because of, first, deep snow and then mud. Deep snow blocked ranchers’ paths to get more feed for their stock from town – and when ranchers did have sufficient feed, deep snow often barred the paths between many stock and their feed out on the ranches. The automobile was more vulnerable to deep snow than the horse. The Saturday Evening Post observed that in the Minot, North Dakota, area: “a truck or a tractor couldn’t get through the snow. A horse or an ox could have, and many people were trapped on their farms by progress.” Given the usefulness of animal travel, some people turned back to old forms of travel. For example, one western South Dakota rancher used a bobsled drawn by four borrowed horses to take hay to his cattle because the snow was too deep for his Jeep.
Railroads were often blocked by the terrible weather. After tracks were plowed, wind frequently re-blocked them with deep snow. They fought the snow with a combination of rotary plows and bladed wedge plows. In many places, such equipment allowed fast snow removal, but it was also strikingly futile in the hardest-to-clear spots. Many snowdrifts were extremely hard. For example, according the Associated Press, snow, dirt, sand, and ice often formed “veritable glaciers” in cuts. Such places often derailed wedge plows. While rotary plows handled deep, hard snow better than the wedge plows, they were no panacea. Often, when rotaries encountered these masses, “their vanes disintegrated,” according to the AP. Some drifts were so hard that railworkers tried to break them up with dynamite. Rotary plows could also be overwhelmed by especially deep snow. Many in the railroad industry, including a Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad official who had forty-five years of experience, said that the winter of 1948-1949 was the hardest that they had been through.
Shortages appeared because the transportation system was interrupted. By mid-February, because of transportation problems, Casper, Wyoming, had on hand barely a tenth of its normal daily milk consumption. Some people showed desperation in their fuel choices. Residents of Holt County, Nebraska, burned fences, henhouses, furniture, and corn.
By 1949, many on the Northern Plains had access to tractors, which could clear snow and overcome snow blockages. The Saturday Evening Post was right about new transportation technology but too hard on tractors. While they did not eliminate the crisis of the winter of 1948-1949, they did mitigate it a bit. Some people used tractors to allow travel despite deep snow. Tractors also gave individuals the power to take on some of the herculean task of snow removal. The Wyoming Hereford Ranch used a caterpillar tractor with a bulldozer blade to clear paths to food and water. “I really don’t know how we could have pulled through the big blizzard without it,” wrote the ranch manager.
Airplanes were an even more useful tool. Private and military planes were both involved in winter relief. They carried food, animal feed, medicine, messages, and passengers, such as doctors or those who needed medical care, and they allowed pilots to reconnoiter the ground. With deep snow clotting the roads, many people wanted airplanes’ services. Nebraska-based Ainsworth Air Service, owned by George Manes who flew the plane and his wife who took customers’ orders by phone, felt the demand keenly. The business had so many orders that although George did not have time to eat enough and lost a lot of weight, he still could not keep up with them all. “People in their desperation have been getting mad over the telephone,” his wife wrote. “I can understand their feelings but I can’t take that kind of treatment.”
While they were helpful, airplanes did not move goods as efficiently as trucks. They could not solve the transportation problem of the Northern Plains during the winter of 1948-1949. The governor of Wyoming said in early January that “airplane service cannot hope to be adequate” for meeting stockowners’ feed needs.
New communications technology performed better than new transportation technology. Radios helped to keep the people of the Northern Plains connected even when blizzards or deep snow precluded movement. Radios provided a means of conveying the Weather Bureau’s forecasts to far-flung households. These forecasts varied in quality. They were not always accurate, but, when the Weather Bureau got it right, they allowed many people to brace themselves against oncoming bad weather. “Sure glad we got the blizzard warning over the radio,” wrote central Montana sheepraiser John A. “Del” Stark, “so I was about half ready for it when she came.” In response to the warning, he moved feed into convenient position to get it to his stock. While 250 to 500 people died in the Dakotas and Nebraska because of a surprise blizzard in 1888, only 42 people died in of winter weather in the Northern Plains states in January 1949. Weather broadcasts likely had something to do with this. Radio also fended off a sense of isolation by keeping residents informed of local and national news and could even perform some of the personal communication made possible by the telephone. Popular broadcaster Ida McNeil informed one western South Dakota woman over the air that her husband and son were safe in Pierre from a blizzard that began while they were on a trip to town but that they had decided to wait out the storm before heading home. The radio also helped the rescue effort. It carried messages about how to signal airplanes, informed ranchers about when snowplows were on their way so that they could arrange for feed-bearing trucks to follow them, and called on South Dakotans to volunteer to help the snowplowing effort. The trouble with the radio was that it allowed only one-way communication. That left some people in the uncomfortable position of the snowbound travelers stuck at David Cook’s southeastern Wyoming ranch. Described on the radio as missing, they were unable, Cook recalled, to “answer back” with the truth.
The telephone complemented the radio by allowing two-way communication. It allowed people to interact with radio broadcasts and call for help. Eventually, Cook used his tractor to drive him out to where his phone line was broken. Once he fixed it, he put a call through to Cheyenne, Wyoming. It brought snowplows, Army vehicles, and ambulances to the rescue. Party line phones, on which everyone on the line could hear everyone else’s calls, gave telephones a little bit of radio’s broadcast potential. This commonly used connection system allowed neighborhoods to collectively discuss the storm or get updates on how their neighbors were faring. And the telephone helped people to coordinate their efforts, as when a group of western Nebraskans joined their tractors to clear a path to a nearby town to shop. One limitation of the telephone was that many did not have one. Only about half of Dakota farms had telephones in the early 1950s.
But communications technology could not clear the roads or the drifts that separated stock from their feed. To solve the problem, in late January, President Harry Truman authorized a military relief effort, which eventually served the eastern half of Wyoming, the majority of North Dakota and Nebraska, and western South Dakota. Maj. Gen. Lewis A. Pick was given command of this effort, known as Operation Snowbound. He had command of National Guard, Fifth Army, Air Force, county government, and civilian personnel. At its largest, the operation’s military, Red Cross, and hired personnel strength was 6,237 people operating 1,646 pieces of equipment. The project displayed a great reliance on potent modern technology. Never before had so many bulldozers been used on a single project. The project also used dozens of weasels, also known as M-29 cargo carriers. Designed to operate in snowy Norway during World War II, in 1949 these vehicles were used to move supplies and people. Overhead, military aircraft carried doctors, messages, food, and medicine to where they were needed and did reconnaissance.
But Operation Snowbound also displayed the continued limitation of humans in the face of nature on the Northern Plains. While it cleared the region’s roads by mid-March, it was bedeviled by the weather, including cold temperatures and hard, deep snowdrifts. Worst of all, during the first half of February, wind often blew snow back onto cleared roads – sometimes, according to one report, “within minutes of being cleared.” The operation was reliant on good weather to make progress. Snow removal was, as the Wyoming State Tribune put it “entirely dependent on the whims of the weather. Nothing much can be done anywhere until the winds stop so roads can be kept open.”
Because of the limitations of government and technology, various long-manifested characteristics of the people of the Northern Plains also remained essential for finding security. One was local cohesion, involving both acts of private neighborliness, such as offering hospitality, bringing mail or supplies, checking on the condition of others, and acting as a rescuer. Neighborliness could include the use of new technology or government services. In early January, snowbound people in southeastern Wyoming helped their neighbor who had suffered a heart attack by reaching a place where a phone call for help could be placed to Cheyenne and then by guiding and clearing a path for the ambulance. On February 5, a neighbor hauled a load of animal feed to the Starks’ as far as the plowed road ran. That night, the neighbor telephoned the county commissioners on behalf of the Starks, who did not own a telephone, asking them to dispatch a plow to clear the road the rest of the way to their home. The request was granted the very next day, allowing the Starks to receive their feed and go to town to buy more supplies. Del Stark wrote, “everyone seems to try to help us out when we are in a jam.”
Local cohesion could also include activity by both local government and private citizens. The Fifth Army acknowledged the importance of county commissioners and local emergency committees, which were made up of a combination of figures inside and outside government. The Fifth Army called them “local people familiar with the local conditions and circumstances.” They helped Operation Snowbound to know who needed help and which requests for help to prioritize. They also provided Operation Snowbound with local knowledge in the form of maps and guides. Their help was “practically indispensable,” the Fifth Army said. On top of these committees, what the Fifth Army called “key residents,” including newspaper editors and postmasters, also provided valuable information about needs in their communities.
Imagination, the means of creatively solving problems, also remained an important means of finding security. It was demonstrated in the form of Ida McNeil’s personal messages on the radio. It was also shown by the family that sheltered itself from the January 2-5 storm in a stranded car by using the padding from the car’s seats as insulation for the car and additional protection for their bodies. Often, drivers and snowplow operators showed imagination by driving off of the road or clearing off-road paths in order to dodge the worst snowdrifts.
The helpful innovations of recent decades could not prevent this winter from being an awful experience – for humans and livestock alike. Many livestock suffered frozen body parts and long-term food deprivation or met their deaths from the weather. Many humans in the region experienced suffering from fear and physical discomfort indoors and out. Del Stark exemplified their suffering. Exposure to cold, wind, and the reflection of the sun off the snow all aggravated him while working outdoors. “[M]y face feels as though I had been working around a furnace,” he remarked. At the same time, he feared that many of his sheep would die from the hard winter and bankrupt his family. On February 16-17, while deep snow deterred the Starks from trying to get to town to replenish their dwindling feed supply, a warm wind began melting the snow, igniting Stark’s hope that enough would melt that his sheep would be able to get more nutrition from grazing. But after two days of thawing, snow began falling. Stark muttered about committing suicide and said that his family felt “growing fear and panic” that the storm would produce a long-term interruption in grazing.
In the face of these harsh conditions, the people of the region demonstrated tenacity by going about their work and, when they had open roads, staying rather than leaving. This willingness to endure helped them to enjoy the security of hanging onto their homes and livelihoods.
By 1949, the people of the Northern Plains had obtained many resources to keep them safe and comfortable during winter, but, by the mid-twentieth century, they still remained highly subject to their rugged climate.
1 Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016), 4.
2 Brooks Blevins, “Life on the Margins: The Diaries of Minnie Atteberry,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 75 (Winter 2016): 299-304, 307-308.
3 Elwyn B. Robinson, History of North Dakota (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), 563-464; James Richard Smith, Geography of the Northern Plains and Other Essays (Sioux Falls, S.D.: Augustana College Press, 1990), 71; Melvin E. Kazeck, North Dakota: A Human and Economic Geography (Fargo: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1956), 76, 119-120, 148; Gordon, Rise and Fall of American Growth, 194; Clinton Warne, “The Acceptance of the Automobile in Nebraska,” Nebraska History 37 (September 1956): 222-229, 235; Michael L. Tate, The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 216; Patrick Allitt, “How the Railroads Defeated Winter,” Invention and Technology 13 (Winter 1998): 63; Gerald M. Best, Snowplow: Clearing Mountain Rails (Berkeley, Calif.: Howell-North Books, 1966), 53, 55-56; “State Planning System to Keep Roads Clear of Snow,” Fargo [N.D.] Forum, Dec. 26, 1926, p. 11; “Keeping the Roads Open,” Fargo Forum, Dec. 21, 1926, p. 12; S. S. Sternberg, “Keeping Roads Open for Winter Traffic,” Roads and Streets, August 1927, p. 357; “Rotary Snow Plow Attacks Highways,” Bismarck [N.D.] Tribune, Dec. 21, 1927, p. 4; “Fighting Western Blizzards,” Roads and Streets, May 1949, pp. 63-64. On the early years of the Weather Bureau, see Charles C. Bates and John F. Fuller, America’s Weather Warriors, 1814-1985 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986), 10-13; Donald R. Whitnah, A History of the United States Weather Bureau (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), 12-60; Patrick Hughes, A Century of Weather Service: A History of the Birth and Growth of the National Weather Service (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1970), 21-27; William B. Hazen, History of the Signal Service, Army of the United States, and Special Catalogue of the U.S. Signal Service Exhibit at the International Exhibition of Electricity (Paris: N.p., 1881), 12.
4 “Severe Local Storms for January 1949,” Monthly Weather Review, January 1949, pp. 26-27; “Climatological Data for January 1949,” Monthly Weather Review, pp. 21-24; “Climatological Data for February 1949,” Monthly Weather Review, February 1949, pp. 58-61; “Severe Storms for February 1949,” Monthly Weather Review, February 1949, p. 63; L. H. Seamon, “The Weather of 1949 in the United States,” Monthly Weather Review, December 1949, p. 325 [quotation].
5 “Fighting Western Blizzards,” 59, 61, 63-64, 66, 68, 72, 74, 76; Headquarters, Fifth Army Disaster Force “Snowbound,” History, Fifth Army Disaster Force Snowbound: Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, January to March-1949, Omaha, Neb., March 16, 1949, pp. 2, 7, 17; “Severe Local Storms for January 1949,” 26; “Severe Storms for February 1949,” 63; Clinton A. Branum, “Condensation of Report from Federal Works Agency,” in Report of Wyoming’s “Operation Snowbound” 1949, ed. Louise Love (N.p.: Wyoming Emergency Relief Board, [1949]), 57-61; Helen Murphy diary, Jan. 22, Feb. 9, 20, 22 [quotation], 28, box 2, folder 5, Helen Normand Murphy Papers, OGLMC 1249, Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks; Ray Robinson, “North Dakota’s ‘Worst Winter,’ ” Roads and Streets, October 1948, p. 92; Robert L. Carlson and Larry J. Sprunk, History of the North Dakota State Highway Department (Bismarck: North Dakota State Highway Department, 1979), 44, 49; “Army Making Sizable Dent in Huge Task,” Daily Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, S.D.), Feb. 2, 1949, p. 1.
6 Del Stark diary, Feb. 1, 1949, box 10, folder 4, John A. “Dell” [sic] Papers, Mss 046, University of Montana, Mansfield Library, Archives and Special Collections, Missoula; Mrs. J. H. Chamberlain, Blizzard of ’49 (Rapid City, S.D.: N.p., 1949) 22, 51; Branum, “Condensation of Report from Federal Works Agency,” 57-61; “Distress in McLean Area Said Critical,” Fargo Forum and Daily Republican, Feb. 3, 1949, p. 7.
7 Mark Murphy, “Minot, North Dakota,” Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 12, 1949, p. 156 [quotation]; Gary D. McGinnis, “Snowbound in ’49 – Through the Eyes of an Eight-Year-Old,” in Faith Country Heritage, 1910-1985, eds. Lavonne R. Butler and Ethel Schrader (Faith, S.D.: Faith Historical Committee, 1985), 116-117.
8 Fifth Army Disaster Force “Snowbound,” History, 23; Chamberlain, Blizzard of ’49, 43, 58; S. L. Fee telegram to W. F. Roberts, Jan. 19, 1949, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad – Lines West – Records, RG3913.AM, ser. 4, box 89, folder 1 [hereinafter CBQ Records; all documents used in this paper are from the same folder], Nebraska State Historical Society; S. L. Fee, telegram to Val Peterson and W. F. Roberts, Jan. 24, 1949, ibid.; Basil C. Raffety, “Casey Jones May Take Back Seat,” Beatrice [Neb.] Daily Sun, Feb. 20, 1949, p. 1 [quotation]; “Union Pacific Railroad Report: ‘The Blizzard of ’49,’ ” in Love, Report of Wyoming’s “Operation Snowbound”, 62-64; Perry Buckle, “C. B. & Q. Railroad Report on ‘Operation Snowbound,’ ” in ibid., 65-66; “Report from Chicago and North Western Railway System,” in ibid., 67.
9 Esther M. Tomlinson and G. H. Wade, “Airlift in Nebraska,” Disaster: A Red Cross Publication Devoted to Relief and Prevention, December 1949, p. 3, box 2, ser. 1, subser. 6, folder 9, January 12, 1888, Blizzard Club Papers, RG3658.AM, NSHS; Chamberlain, Blizzard of ’49, 48, 63; “Winds Delay Road Crews,” Casper [Wyo.] Tribune-Herald, Feb. 16, 1949, p. 1; “Casper Food, Fuel Supplies Dwindle,” Wyoming State Tribune (Cheyenne), Feb. 16, 1949, pp. 1, 13.
10 Donald and Ileen Smith, “The Milk Cow Went Berserk,” in The Blizzard in Black and White: A Scrapbook Album of Photographs And Stories as Told by the Survivors, Book Three (Carpenter, Wyo.: Our Family Circle Press, 2004), 73; [Robert W. Lazear] to [G. C. Lazear], Jan. 8, 1949, [Robert W. Lazear] to [G. C. Lazear], March 25, 1949, box 131, correspondence G. C. Lazear, Wyoming Hereford Ranch Records, University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center, Laramie [hereinafter AHC]; Kazeck, North Dakota, 147.
11 Chamberlain, Blizzard of ’49, 5, 16-18, 32, 34, 45, 47, 60; “Fliers’ Rescue Job in Storm Area Complex,” Omaha [Neb.] World-Herald, Jan. 7, 1949, CBQ Records; “C-47 Off To Minot For ‘Haylift,’ ” Fargo Forum and Daily Republican, Feb. 3, 1949, p. 1; Roy V. Alleman, Blizzard 1949 (St. Louis: Patrice Press, 1991), 116 [quotation], 117.
12 A. G. Crane to R. J. Hofmann and Russell Thorp, Jan. 9, 1949, box 220, folder 5, Wyoming Stock Growers Association records, AHC [quotation]; Fifth Army Disaster Force “Snowbound,” History, 18.
13 John Stark diary, Jan. 3, 7, 8 [quotation], Feb. 4, 8, 11, March 15, 1949, box 10, folder 4; Chamberlain, Blizzard of ’49, 6, 14, 17, 31, 47-48, 51; David F. Cook, “The Blizzard of Forty-nine,” 1, David F. Cook Papers (collection 9858), box 2, folder 22, AHC; David Laskin, The Children’s Blizzard (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 2, 6; “Death Toll At Least 112 From January Weather,” Fargo Forum and Daily Republican, Feb. 2, 1949, p. 1; “Black Hills Residents Swarm Into Grocery Stores to Stock Up Supplies for Storm Period,” Daily Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, S.D.), Jan. 8, 1949, p. 1; Chamberlain, Blizzard of ’49, 6, 17, 31; Tomlinson and Wade, “Airlift in Nebraska,” 3; Louise Love, “Wyoming Winter, 1949,” in Love, Report of Wyoming’s “Operation Snowbound”, 22; Fifth Army Disaster Force “Snowbound,” History, 10, G-i.
14 Cook, “Blizzard of Forty-nine,” 3, 4 [quotation].
15 Cook, “Blizzard of Forty-Nine,” 4-5; Alleman, Blizzard 1949, 21-22, 123; Polly Spence, Moving Out: A Nebraska Woman’s Life, ed. Karl Spence Richardson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 17; Kazeck, North Dakota, 76, 148; Smith, Geography of the Northern Plains, 71.
16 Fifth Army Disaster Force “Snowbound,” History; Headquarters Fifth Army, History, “Operation Snowbound,” 29 January-15 March 1949 (Chicago, April 12, 1949), Blizzards vertical file, South Dakota State Historical Society, Pierre; “ ‘Operation Snowbound’ Largest Relief Mission in History,” 1-10, blizzard of 1949 vertical file, SDSHS; Lewis A. Pick, “Condensation of Report on Fifth Army’s ‘Disaster Force Snowbound,’ ” in Love, Report of Wyoming’s “Operation Snowbound”, 47-49; Chamberlain, Blizzard of ’49, 7; "M-29 Weasel," U.S. Army Transportation Museum, https://web.archive.org/web/20080228084521/http://www.transchool.eustis.army.mil/museum/weasel.htm (accessed July 16, 2018).
17 Fifth Army Disaster Force “Snowbound,” History, 6-7, 16-17, 20, 24-25, 29; Branum, “Condensation of Report from Federal Works Agency,” 57-58, 61; “Report of Commanding Officer, Fort Francis E. Warren and 3450th Technical Training Wing,” in Love, Report of Wyoming’s “Operation Snowbound”, 51, 53 [quotation]; “ ‘Battle of Drifts’ Begins Again,” Wyoming State Tribune, Feb. 8, 1949, pp. 1 [quotation], 13; “Nature [Lends?] Helping Hand to Help Fifth Army Operations in Snow-Busting; Work Speeds Up,” Lusk [Wyo.] Free Lance, Feb. 17, 1949, pp. 1, 10; “Operation Snowbound [Ends?] in County; Army and Private Equipment On Move; Mud Conditions Now Becoming Problem,” L.usk Free Lance, Feb. 24, 1949, p. 1.
18 Dona Gale, “Running to Save a Life,” in Jewell, Blizzard in Black and White, 12; “Walk Right Over the Fence,” in ibid., 12; “Memorable Trip to Big City,” in ibid., 11; Stout, “Here’s My Blizzard Story,” in ibid., 4; Stark diary, Feb. 5, 6 [quotation], 7, 1949, box 10, folder 4.
19 Fifth Army Disaster Force “Snowbound,” History, 4 [quotation], 5, 9, 18 [quotation], 19
20 RWL [Robert W. Lazear] to Glen Ingram, Jan. 8, 1949, box 131, correspondence – G. C. Lazear, 1949, WHRR; Wyoming Hereford Ranch to Ward B. Maurer, Jan. 9, 1949, box 131, correspondence MA-MB, 1949, ibid.; Wyoming Hereford Ranch to Doc, Jan. 6, 1949, box 134, correspondence W, 1949, ibid.; Hull Cook, Fifty Years a Country Doctor (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 122; Fifth Army Disaster Force “Snowbound,” History, 21.
21 [Lazear] to [Lazear], Jan. 8, 1949; Wyoming Hereford Ranch to Carl P. Arnim, March 23, 1949, box 127, correspondence A, 1949; Stark diary, Dec. 7, 18, 30 [quotation], 1948, Jan. 2, 6, 10, 19, 22-24, Feb.16-17, 18 [quotation], March 13-14, 1949, box 10, folder 4; George Knutson and Floyd K. Harmston, “Special Wyoming Livestock Loss Report, June 1, 1949,” in Love, Report of Wyoming’s “Operation Snowbound”, 78-80.
