Page:A Brief History of South Dakota.djvu/166

 CHAPTER XXVII A MEMORABLE WINTER

year 1880 brought a greater inflow of new settlers than had come in any previous year. They were chiefly homesteaders, who built temporary homes—shacks, they were called—for the summer, and devoted their efforts chiefly to breaking up the soil, making hay, and producing such crops as could be grown upon the sod, leaving the construction of more substantial and permanent buildings until the autumn months; for the experience of older settlers had taught that glorious autumn weather, extending on until nearly the holidays, might reasonably be expected. But in this year, a year when of all years it was most unseasonable, a great blizzard came at the middle of October. In a hundred years of western history such a thing had occurred but once or twice before, and in those instances the October storms were less severe than that which came upon the unprotected settlers in 1880. The snow fell to a very great depth and was blown by a violent wind until the open shacks and stables were filled, ravines were drifted full to the level of the general country, stock was driven away or smothered in the drifts, and the settlers suffered very severely. A few lives were lost; very few indeed, 160