This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Have you noticed that it always seems to be an especially good day before major disasters? The weather is perfect, and only the few worrywarts have what the newspapers call "premonitions of impending doom."
So it was among the twelve hundred people in the small river town of Camanche, Iowa, on the balmy afternoon of June 3rd, 1860. Neighbors gossiped from porch to porch, children played on the lawns. A few were picking wild strawberries east of town.
Meanwhile, two tornados had touched down twelve miles apart west of the Cedar River. A few miles from Camanche, they joined forces and headed on in. For two minutes the darkness roared. Then the worst windstorm west of the Mississippi was over. One hundred and thirty-four people were dead; many others were injured. Large parts of the town were carried across the Mississippi far into Illinois. There was not enough debris left in Camanche to fill a single room. In town, ninety buildings were destroyed, along with sixty-three barns and stables, five warehouses. Gone were two churches, two hotels, thirty-six businesses, and several blocks of brand-new brick buildings. Nearly every remaining building was damaged.
Survivors dug a hundred graves for bodies laid out on the counters of a vacant store. Twenty-five coffins lined the sidewalks in front of Dunning's Bank. The three Camanche ministers buried the dead, aided by two pastors from Clinton, two from Lyons, and one from Low Moor.
Camanche had been laid out in 1836 with the same grand vision that planted many similar river towns: visions of being the great Queen City of the West—a great river port. Its founder, Dr. George Peck, platted his town into 3,200 lots, and walked across Illinois to Lake Michigan to sell them to Chicagoans interested in moving to a finer, up-coming city.
The Great Camanche Tornado ended those visions. Many residents moved away, but those remaining slowly returned the town to normal. A school, a city hall, a library, a fire department appeared in time. Today, neighbors still talk from porch to porch and children ride bikes down the quiet streets, confident that, as they say, tornados never strike twice in the same place—or was that lightning?
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
