St Paul, Minnesota, USA
1904 - SIXTEEN PEOPLE KILLED - The Tornado at Twin Cities Wrought Devastation.

It Cut a Pathway Eight Miles Long Through the Business District - Hundreds of Fine Shade Trees Ruined.

St. Paul, Minn., August 22. - The tornado which Saturday night struck this city cut a pathway about half a mile in width and eight miles long through the business and residence district, leaving ruin and devastation in its track. Sixteen persons were killed and the list of injured is long, in which there are several who are reported to be fatally hurt. The downtown business district was hit hard, many of the big office and business blocks being completely riddled and the stocks of wholesale houses damaged by the floods of rain that accompanied the wind.

The aggregate property loss is estimated at $3,000,000. Of this amount St. Paul suffered to the extent of about $1,000,000. Minneapolis' damage is estimated at $1,500,000, while in the outside districts it is feared that $500,000 will not cover the damage done to crops and farm property.

Beginning at a point below Fort Snelling there is the first known evidence that the storm struck with damaging effect. It came from the southwest and howling in its fury uprooted trees and demolished buildings in its pathway toward St. Paul. It tore off two spans of the high bridge completely. There the bridge connected with the high bluffs at West St. Paul and it is 180 feet above the river. This mass of steel was carried to the flats below, where flying steel girders and heavy planks fell on several small frame houses of the flat dwellers and crushed them. None of the occupants of these houses was hurt, they having seen the storm coming and taken refuge in the caves in the hillside.

The storm tore along the flats, uprooting trees on Harriet island and with a deafening roar and the hiss and splash of filling sheets of rain it struck this city at Wabasha street bridge. Here were located the Tivoli concert hall and Empire theater, both of which were fairly crowded with men watching the performance. Both buildings stood on the edge of the bluff overlooking the river, with sides of the buildings open, and were wrecked. The full force of the tornado struck them. The buildings began to sway and rock and the audience became panic-stricken. Men and boys rushed over each other for the exits.

St. Sigfrid's Episcopal church on Eighth street, a frame structure, was levelled to the ground. The tornado dropped again at Lafayette park, corner of Tenth and Lafayette avenue, and all of the magnificent elm and other shad trees were uprooted or twisted off.

From Lafayette park the tornado swept up Lafayette avenue to Payne avenue, the principal business street of East St. Paul, wrecking many business structures and unroofing and otherwise damaging residence property. The tornado then veered about and skirted along the eastern edge of town, striking the house of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic institution, on Milton street, unroofing and badly wrecking the dormitory, killing one child and injuring several of the nuns.

The damage to shade trees throughout the city was enormous. Stately elms, three feet in circumference, were either torn up by the roots or twisted off like reeds. Along Summit avenue, famous throughout the country as a beautiful residence street, trees and shrubbery that lined the boulevard were devastated. No considerable damage was done to any of the magnificent residences however.

Harriet island and the public baths suffered far more from the fury of the wind than could be learned during the first hours of the story. Nearly every one of the 500 trees comprising the big groves on the island are either torn up by their roots, twisted off at the base or broken off half way up their trunks. In the destruction of the trees the island has lost one of its chief attractions and it will take a generation or more to replace the beautiful groves.

The Sun
Chanute, Kansas
August 22, 1904

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