SRHS
Steamboat Rock Historical Society
WORLD WAR...AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION
TORNADO OF '18
The home of Henry Finster who lost his life in the tornado of 1918 that destroyed many farmsteads.
This is the barn on the farm of Antone Luiken east of Steamboat Rock after the tornado hit that farm. Notice the dead horses in the photo lower right.
On May 21, 1918, a terrible tornado crossed the countryside from southwest to northeast of Steamboat Rock. Harold Luiken gave an account from his experience of what happened.
“Wendell and I were in country school and when Dad realized the weather was getting bad, he sent the hired man with horse and buggy to get us home. I remember as we were galloping towards our house Dad was standing out in the road waving his cap for us to hurry which we were already doing. When we got in the yard we were told to hurry in the house while they undone the horse and just turned it loose in the barn. This wasn’t any more than done when the storm struck. Our buildings stayed intact but the neighborhood farms were wiped clean. As soon as it was over, Dad got on a horse and rode to close neighbors and they were all sitting in their basement stunned and soaked but all alive.”
Newspaper accounts call the storm a cyclone. I attempted a bit of research, and don’t think the word tornado had been thought of yet.
One account called it, “The most destructive storm since the cyclone of 1861.” It was said to have entered the county about the center of the line of Concord township.
Henry Finster, who lived south of Steamboat was not so fortunate, he was killed outright, on his farm when the tornado swept through. His hired man Homer McClain nearly lost a leg. Mrs. Ole Boyd was taken to the Eldora hospital with both arms broken. A piece of wood an inch thick and six inches long was driven into her thigh and her hip was thought to be fractured. Mr. Boyd had a broken shoulder and some broken ribs. Mr. and Mrs. W.H. Wehrman were somewhat injured.
All the buildings were destroyed on the farms owned or occupied by Ole Boyd, Mr. Phial, Hodgson’s Evergreen Nursery, Charles and August Meyers, J.Q. Abbott, W.H. Wehrman, Richard Gruelick, Fred Sprain, Reed and Lamprecht, G.C. Perkins, Leo Marks, John Walker, Henry Finster, Roy Finster, Mrs. Shemel, and Emil Tietz. The home of Julius Osmondson was totally destroyed and all barns and outbuildings demolished.
Considerable damage was done at farms owned or occupied by Clarence Osmondson, Lew Eller, Will Eller, Otto Bahr, Irvin Brightwell, J.J. Mossman, Henry Ziesman, Mrs. Boyd, Arnold Kusserow, Albert Kusserow, Mrs. Emeny, Schemel Bothers, Riley McCall, Will Smith, Anton Luiken, Karl Wubben, Will Miller, Mr. Beving Robert McCaw, the Priske’s and Kernel Lenning.
The Pleasant Mound school foundation was all that remained after the tornado swept through the countryside. The loss of this country school was instrumental in beginning school consolidation in Steamboat Rock.
The Pleasant Mound school was torn from it’s foundation, and never rebuilt. The students went to school in Steamboat from then on.
The storm also demolished the coal bank hill bridge.
One strange thing happened in the tornado on the Antone Luiken farm. A basket used for gathering eggs was in the pump house on the farm when the tornado hit. After the storm was over and the family went to investigate the damage they found the basket neatly hung on a fence post nearby.
