Watertown, SD Tornado, June 1914

TORNADO SWEEPS THE MIDDLE WEST.

SECTIONS OF CITIES IN RUINS AS RESULT OF THE EARLY MORNING STORM.

MUCH DAMAGE REPORTED IN THE VARIOUS DISTRICTS OF RACINE COUNTY.

Racine and vicinity was hit by the tail end of a South Dakota cyclone after 3 o'clock this morning. Many trees were blown over at least a dozen windmills leveled on farms in the western part of the county, fences destroyed, and crops wbove the ground leveled and damaged. So far as known no buildings, outside of a few hen houses, sustained damage. A large tree in front of the ROBERTS' home on Wisconsin street, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets, was toppled over with a crash.
Hundreds of people were aroused from their slumbers and declare that their homes shook like leaves and it was feared that they would be destroyed.
Reports coming in at noon indicate that considerable damage resulted to farm property in the vicinity of Burlington and Union Grove, also in Walworth county. Watertown, S. D., was swept for thirty blocks and three hundred buildings destroyed.

STORM SWEEPS THIRTY BLOCKS.
Watertown, S.D., June 24. -- Early today it was known that 22 persons were injured, three of them fatally in last night's tornado which wrecked buildings covering thirty or more blocks in the southern part of the city.
Most of the injured were caught before they had time to escape to cars or other places of refuge.
NORMAN ROSE and JAMES HOGAN, both of whom suffered fractured skulls were the most dangerously hurt and both are expected to die. The infant child of CARL BACHLAND also sustained what are believed to be fatal injuries.
The usual tornadic freaks were to be seen after the storm passed, one of which was the raising of a large barn from its foundation and turning it upside down into a residence. A Rock Island passenger train well filled had every window blown out, but none of the passengers suffered serious injury.
The central or business part of the city did not suffer seriously.
Watertown, with a population of 7,000 is the center of a rich farming country and is noted as a grain center. The lumber industry is of considerable importance and it is the trading center of Codington county. The city comparatively is highly favored with railroads. There are five of them -- the Chicago and Northwestern, the Rock Island, the Great Northern, the Minneapolis and St. Louis and the South Dakota Central.

The Racine Journal-News Wisconsin 1914-06-24
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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!