27. Tornado Damage near Logan, IA

"Dreadful Haricane"

t was another bad day for Pvt. Alexander Willard. About noon on 29 July 1804 he realized he'd left his tomahawk at the previous night's camp. He had to walk more than three miles, alone, over land he had seen only from the river, to retrieve the tomahawk, then walk back to rejoin the company. On his way back, hurrying across the Boyer River on a log, Willard dropped his rifle, which sank deep into the mud. Unable to recover the vital item himself, he had to catch up with the party to get help. The captains sent a few men back with him in a boat, and Reubin Field dived in to retrieve Willard's rifle.

That same day, Clark reported "much fallen timber, apparently the ravages of a dreadful haricane which had passed obliquely across the river from N. W. to S. E. about twelve months since. Many trees were broken off near the ground the trunks of which were sound and four feet in diameter." In today’s terms, it was a tornado, not a hurricane, that caused the damage, but in those days the two words were practically synonymous. In a remarkable coincidence, just two days before this photo was taken a tornado crossed the Lewis and Clark route near here, feeling trees and killing two women.

From Discovering Lewis & Clark from the Air
Photography by Jim Wark
Text by Joseph Mussulman
Reproduced by permission of Mountain Press.