Nemo’s Got Nothing On 1888

“The department of the public works have over 100 teams at work removing snow from the streets to-day. … To-day the teams are at work in Chapel and Church streets. The city is paying $5 per day for double teams and $3 for single teams.”

That’s the latest storm update — from Friday March 16, 1888.

The news appeared on the front page of The New Haven Evening Register, four days after the beginning of the Great Blizzard of 1888.

That blizzard dumped 45 inches of snow on the city, nearly a foot more than New Haven received last weekend when Winter Storm Nemo roared through town, earning the title of biggest blizzard since 1888.

A perusal of newspaper reports and photos from 1888 reveals some similarities between the two storms and a number of important differences. For one, the Great Blizzard of 1888 was responsible for some 400 fatalities along the Atlantic coast, while Nemo claimed only 18 lives, in the U.S. and Canada.

In 1888, workers cleared the sidewalks first, while the streets remained piled high with snow, indicating the different transportation priorities of the age. While Nemo stranded cars and trucks throughout the city, the blizzard of 1888 shut down horse-drawn streetcars and railroad service, and took out the telegraph wires.

“A Howling Blizzard,” the Register declared on March 12, 1888, with something approaching pride. ​“Winter saved its best trump for the last. It threw it to-day and won the pot. A bewildering, belligerent, blinding blizzard … If there was ever anything like it before in this part of North America, no one remembers it and if they did their testimony against the reputation of this blizzard as the prize storm wouldn’t be received.”

Click here to read the Monday March 12, 1888 issue of the Evening Register. Click here, here, here, and here to read issues from later in the week.

Train service was ​“knocked endwise” on the first day, cutting off New Haven from New York as if the city ​“were out in the desert of the Sahara,” the paper reported.

The snow also stopped the ​“horse cars” running between Westville and Fair Haven.

Power stayed on downtown. ​“The city will be illumined with electric lights to-night as usual,” the paper reported. ​“The Electric Light company had little trouble straightening out its wires.” The naptha lamps in Fair Haven, however, were expected to be out all night.

While telegraph wires were down, the blizzard seems to have improved phone service. ​“Strange to say the local telephone service was never better, and calls were answered much more satisfactorily than on ordinary days.”

As with Nemo, the storm caused a number of cancellations. Children were sent home from school, the post offices were closed, and the Meriden-New Haven polo game was cancelled.

After four days without trains, the first arrival was a train from Springfield, which was ​“wildly cheered at the depot.”

“Four days without a train coming or going!” the top story proclaimed on Thursday, March 15, 1888. ​“That will be a queer yarn to hand down into history.”

Street car tracks were still unusable by Thursday, but the Fair Haven and Westville Horse railroad company was working to run ​“big sleighs” on the line.

“Six of Yale’s young gentlemen” were arrested for ​“snow-balling.” They fought the charges, bringing over 100 ​“Yale men” who filled the gallery. Judge Pickett was not swayed, and the students were fined up to $15 each.

Business in the city began to return to normal by Thursday, amid concerns of a lack of fresh meat. And the city began to assess the cost. ​“A well posted financier and business man estimated to-day that the loss to the city will not fall below a clean half million of dollars” — about $12.5 million in today’s dollars. That’s compared to estimates that Nemo will cost the city $2 million.

Can you identify where the photos in this story were taken? Let us know in the comments.