The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-05-01
DAKOTA SNOWDRIFTs.
How the Great Rotary Ploughs of the
 Railroads Deal With Them


 Railroads Deal With Them.
 The long-delayed breakup has come the enormous quantity of snow which 1 has fallen in the northwest since early in November. It has been the most snow bound winter that the Dakotas l and Minnesota have known since 1881. At this time year ago the streets of Minneapolis were dusty and bicycle I faces and century runs were. under way. To-day there are two feet of snow and ice on the ground. and as late as Monday, March 15, 1t was six de- grees below zero. The preceding day it was ten degrees below. On that day | various places in the Dakotas experi- enced the coldest weather that they have known in at least ten years. At Williston it was forty below and Bis marck saw the mercury go to thirty six below. With such intense cold, and with snow lying in drifts ten feet, fif- teen, and even higher. the whole people of North Dakota were perepared to ex- pect winter to last all summer.
 | But in the next twenty-four hours there was startling change. A Chin nook wind from the Pacific coast found its way across the Dakota prairies and on Monday night, March 15, the mercu- l ry was forty-five degrees above zero-a | change of eighty-one degrees The i Chinook continued on eastward and reached eastern Minnesota on Tuesday | afternoon and on Wednesday it raned as it did in the days of Noah The weather authorities concede that spring | has come at last, but it is a spring | which will long have the appearance of winter
 | People in the east and south cannot realize the extent of this winters snow-storms and the great obstruc- tion that they have been to railroad traffic. Northwestern people can only compare them with the winter of 1880- S1. The transcontinental railroad lines running out from Minneapolis-th Northern Pacific, the Great Northern and the oo-Pacific-have known hard | ly a week in the whole winter in which snow or intense cold did not delay their trains from few minutes to forty eight hours, and the Soo-Pacific has often been tied up on through traffic for several days at a time Such through 1 traffic for several days a a time. Such | apolis-Dakota lines as the vari- ous short lines of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern the Hastings and l iyyic pf M, waukee and St. Paul, and the Pacific division of the Minneapolis and St, Louis have had continual and dis couraging fight with the snow. The Great Northerns Minneapolis-S i Falls line and the Hastings and Dako- la have often been tied up for a week at time. In the old days when rotary snow ploughs were unknown the block ades would have lasted for months On some of the local roads in the Dakotas there have been month-long blockades this winter. The last heavy storm of the season-that of March 11-12-result | ed in blockades which laid an embargo on railroad traffic lasting to the middle | of March. On March 16 the first train | in a month passed over the north end | of the Milwaukee roads James River division. Still it will be several days before the Great Northern will be running trains between Huron and | W&tertown, and there are several Da- kota lines which probably will not be opened until they are thawed out. 1 Snow ploughs have been busy every month this winter, and all the railroad | companies have been compelled to i hire large crews of shovellers. Even so important a point as Pierre. S. D.. has been shut off from the world nearly half the winter, counting all the differ ent periods at which it has been sealed up. The blockades in many cases have worked great hardships. Communities | have suffered for lack of fuel and pro- visions, and business has been aban- doned.
 The blockades, too, have caused many Imaginable incidents. For in stance, take the experience of the ex- press agents and National Guardsmen who were conveying the funds of the South Dakota Treasury from Pierre to Huron
 The Populistic legislature of South Dakota declared that the retiring treas urer would have to corrohorate his statement as to cash on hand by showing of hard cash at Pierre This item was two hundred thousand dol lars. It was deposited in various South lContinued on Twelfth Page.l