The Great Cyclone at St. Louis and East St. Louis, May 27, 1896

Book excerpt: Shortly after 5:00 P.M. on Wednesday, May 27, 1896, a Herculean tornado shattered the St. Louis area. Within twenty minutes, 137 people had perished in St. Louis, with 118 dead across the river in East St. Louis. Along a ten-mile swath of devastation, the tornado destroyed 311 buildings, heavily damaged 7,200 others, and caused significant harm to 1,300 more. Even today, that powerful cyclone of a century ago "remains the single deadliest incident to befall the St. Louis area", according to Tim O'Neil of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who wrote the foreword for this historic reprint of a book originally published by the Cyclone Publishing Company. The Great Cyclone at St. Louis and East St. Louis, May 27, 1896 was compiled and published at a speed that rivals some of today's quickie publications. The Cyclone Publishing Company obtained its copyright in Washington, D.C., on June 5, 1896, only nine days after the tornado had churned like a killer turbine through the two cities. But a disaster in a major metropolis demanded speed. The public was ravenous for news of what the winds had wrought in St. Louis, at the time the nation's fourth largest city. The Great Cyclone is remarkable for more than the speed with which it was published. Filled with interviews and a great array of illustrations, with factual accounts of where the damage occurred, with lists of the dead and injured, and with the colorful descriptive passages popular among newspapers of the day ("Fire King", "Storm King", "Situation sufficiently horrible to unman the hardiest"), this book presents the best available picture of what happened a hundred years ago in St. Louis. It is, as O'Neil says, a "work of reporting from brick-strewn streets".