Snowfall does not always lead to winter wonderlands

Date: 2/22/2010

Feb. 22, 2010

By Amanda Butcher

Special to The Reminder



As I shoveled the driveway a few weeks ago, wishing the snow blower would start working, I thought about how glad I was that it hadn't snowed much yet this year. I was freezing cold and couldn't wait until March or April, when spring would be right around the corner. Then, I visited the library's archive room the next week and realized that spring might be farther away than that...

In early March 1888, back in the time when you still used your fireplace to keep warm and a snow blower was a crazy dream of the future, three Nor'easters hit the Springfield area in a span of about two days, one right after the other. Over 24 hours of snow meant trouble for our ancestors that lived around here. Newspaper accounts called Main Street in Springfield "trackless as a forest," and in a time when the snow plows aren't coming around every hour, that is a beautiful sight, but it's also a disaster.

Three feet of snow covered level ground, though wind-tossed snowdrifts reached heights of nearly 15 feet! Employees were stuck at work for days on end as the mills and factories where they worked were dug out. Visitors to Springfield were stuck here for the five days it took to restart life as it was before the storm.

Stranded on a train near Indian Orchard was Mayor Maynard, the mayor of Springfield at the time. For two days, food, coal and other necessities were brought to the snowbound train until it could be dug out.

One unfortunate little girl somehow got herself stuck in one of the way-too-tall snowdrifts, though luckily a passerby noticed her hat, and upon picking it up, found her entirely buried underneath. She was quite cold once dug out, and probably would be terrified of blizzards for the rest of her life, but otherwise fine.

So that they wouldn't drown in snow, telegraph boys attached long lengths of wire around their waists to be pulled out of snowdrifts easily.

The Association of '88, which consisted of the group of people who stayed at the Hotel Cooley during and after the storm, met annually to commemorate the blizzard, for lasting friendships were made.

When the town began to clear out the snow, it knew it was going to be an immense project. Snow was carted out of the streets and deposited where it wouldn't cause any trouble by horse-drawn wagons and man powered shovels. Five days after the start of the storm, trains were running again. Springfield was free.

Suddenly, the three inches of snow I had to shovel those few weeks ago didn't seem like such a big deal. I can't remember a time when snowdrifts reached over my head, and I have never seen it snow hard 24 hours on end (for which I am very grateful). A journalist who reported on the storm a hundred years after it began summed everything up with these words:

"They just don't have winters like they used to."