Harry Potter and the Montana Twister
Clipping form the Great Falls Tribune, Sunday June 22, 1924:
“This photograph of the cyclone which last Sunday wrecked farm buildings and injured seven people north of Great Falls, was taken by C.C. Browning at the Elk Horn oil well, 12 miles northwest of the city. The cyclone cloud appeared as shown in the picture a few minutes before it struck the Harry Potter farm, where it demolished buildings and injured Mr. and Mrs. Potter and three other persons.
“The storm swept past the Elk Horn well at a distance of half a mile. An eddy-like wind from the main storm twisted one small building at the well on its foundation, but no material damage was done.”
The Great Falls Tribune reported that the “first cyclone ever known in Montana” struck the farming community between Great Falls and Power, Montana June 15, 1924 at about 2:30pm. The Potter home was wrecked, and Harry, Ida, their son Irving, and their infant granddaughter Fern (daughter of Lois Potter and Elmer Johnston) were taken to Columbus hospital. The McKnight couple’s home was destroyed, and Mrs. McKnight was rushed to the Deaconess hospital with severe internal injury: her liver was ruptured by heavy timber falling on her. Mr. McKnight suffered broken ribs. The Julius Newman ranch and the Gunderson place were named as badly damaged properties. Representatives from the Red Cross estimated that at least seven families were made temporarily destitute by the tornado.
From the Tribune, June 16, 1924:
“‘We were all in the house,’ said Mr. Potter at Columbus hospital Sunday night, ‘when we noticed the funnel shaped cloud coming from the south-west. Before we could make an attempt to escape, we saw the hay frame near the barn crash to the earth, then the chicken house, where my wife had about 100 turnkeys and more than 300 chickens, and a moment later I remarked to my wife that I felt the house moving. Before we could get out it crashed to the ground and we were all knocked unconscious. If it were not for my son, I do not believe any of us would be alive. Irving pulled us out from under the wreckage, despite the fact that he was badly cut and bruised himself.
“‘It all happened so quickly that it seems like a dream. I don’t know what my loss is, but it will run into several thousands of dollars. We have lost everything and what jewelry and trinkets we owned are left out there at the ranch. I suppose all the turkeys and chickens were killed and I had 170 acres of wheat which I am sure was destroyed. The hailstones were as large as crab apples and wherever they hit me they hurt. My head and arms are covered with bruises.’”
Below is an excerpt from We Called Them Back: Montana Homesteaders and Pioneers of the Old Wilson Post Office Country, 1974, pgs. 140-142.
Harry Potter Family
The Potter family came to Montana March 23, 1913. Harry Potter was born April 17, 1869, in Peoria, Illinois. He grew up in Peoria, then moved to North Otter, Illinois where he met Ida Luella Mahan. She was born September 28, 1870. Harry and Ida were married October 28, 1888, at Palmyra, Illinois. They were blessed with nine children, seven boys and two girls: Herman, Thomas, Opal, Roy, Fenton, Lowell, Lois, Harry Jr., and Irvin.
The Potter family farmed near Nilwood, Illinois until coming west to homestead near the west side of Benton Lake, one and one-half miles northwest of the Wilson Post Office. Mr. Potter and son, Fenton, came out to Montanan in boxcar with four horses and household furnishings. They rented a house and worked hard to get it fixed up before Mrs. Potter arrived with four of the children, Lowell, Lois, Harry, and Irvin. Four of the oldest children remained in Illinois.
We arrived in Great Falls, Montana on Easter Sunday, March 23, 1913. We had Easter dinner at the Minneapolis House, we hired a man with a team and a hack to take us out to the house that father had rented near our homestead. Spring was at hand and lots of work to do.
Mr. Potter hired a carpenter to begin building our home and other buildings. We built a stone boat to haul the rocks from the fields. Clearing rocks from one hundred and sixty acres took lots of time and hard work. Some parts were very rocky and other parts weren’t so rocky, but picking them by hand, there were enough. We built a “Rock and Dirt” dam for a reservoir; the rest of the rocks were dumped in fence rows; some remain today. After much rain and snow, we had plenty of water for livestock, turkeys, chickens, and for washing and bathing. Our water for cooking and drinking had to be hauled from the McKenzie springs; it was very good water.
Along with all the hard work, we had lots of pleasure, too. We went to Sunday school and church on Sundays at the Wilson School. On weekends we had box and pie socials and dancing on Saturday nights at the Gray’s Big Barn. We went ice skating on the reservoir and on Benton Lake. The whole family went to all these events.
On December 25, 1919, Lois Potter and Elmer Johnston were married. They farmed with his father one year then they moved to Great Falls. They were blessed with a daughter, Fern, on December 4, 1922. Then came the cyclone, June 15, 1924.
Fern was at Grandma and Grandpa Potter’s farm for the weekend when the cyclone hit. It took our sixteen by thirty-two foot four-room, two story house and strewed it all over the land. Mr. and Mrs. Potter, Irvin and Fern were in the house at the time it hit. There was nothing left to salvage after it was over. Mrs. Potter was black and blue, cuts and gashes in her temples, sticks in her chest and arms. Mr. Potter fractured his back and was bruised all over. Fern was badly bruised all over and cracked a bone in one leg. Irvin and Mother Potter were blown under a floor and Irvin tried to lift it off the top of them. The sharp nails in the floor were punching him in the back and he couldn’t lift it off, his back was a mess with nail holes. Irvin said he lifted many times unsuccessfully, the last time with the good Lord’s help got it off Mother and himself. By this time several neighbors were there to help them. They took Mother and Father Potter and Fern to the hospital in Great Falls. Unbelievable things were seen. Straw was driven right into fence posts, and little turkeys were driven into little holes in the ground. You could lift them out by their beaks—it was something to experience—those little baby turkey in the holes.
Mrs. Potter was cooking a big kettle of dandelion greens for dinner just before the cyclone hit. All Mr. Potter could say was “I won’t get those good greens,” he loved them so much. Fern had three sisters, Dolores, Betty, and Luella.
After the cyclone, the Potter family didn’t move back to the homestead. Irvin rented a house in Great Falls, got himself a job, and cared for his parents there.
Three of the Potter children still live in the area: Lowell and Irvin Potter, Great Falls, and Lois (Potter) Johnston, Simms, Montana.
Above image: Scan of Potter family photos as printed in We Called Them Back.
“From reports received at The Tribune late Sunday afternoon and evening, the cyclone was what is known as a ‘twister,’ and did not follow any definite path but would travel for a few miles in one direction and then suddenly change its course, at times almost turning back on the path it had travelled.” -The Tribune, June 16, 1924
A Great Falls resident, H.G. Stewart, witnessed the funnel shaped cloud demolish the Potter home and three other homes in the area. He estimated that the wreckage from the storm’s path was about two miles wide.
Above image: Scan of a photograph printed in We Called them Back captioned “A cyclone, June 15, 1924.”
From The Tribune, June 17, 1924:
“A sudden swerve in the course of the storm saved the T.W. Hampton farm home near Portage from probably destruction. […] ‘We were eating dinner when a member of the family who was sitting near a window called our attention to a funnel-shaped cloud,’ said Mr. Hampton. ‘The rope of the cyclone approached at the terrific speed and when it was a quarter of a mile distant we were about to go into the basement, but before we started the bottom part of the cloud seemed to separate from the upper and the entire storm moved off to the south. A whirl of dust was all that came near us, but it did no damage. There was no rain or hail at the Hamilton farm, but we heard that a barn belonging to W. Wales, three miles to the northwest was destroyed.’
[…]
“While cyclones in Montana have been so rare that Sunday’s storm was universally believed to have been the first ever known in the state, it developed that a twister of almost equal severity several years ago passed over the country between Hilger and Lewistown, doing considerable damage. Several years prior to the Fergus county cyclone, an even larger twister tore through the Snowy mountains, on the south side of the Judith basin. A large number of trees were torn up, but no other damage was done.”
Harriet Carrier, secretary of the Cascade County Red Cross chapter, along with County Agent F.E. MacSpadlen worked to assess the damages and cost of a relief fund for the families affected by the tornado. The Tribune reported on June 29 that $1,067 had been collected. The Tribune reported August 15 that “the first half of 1924 shows a record of more disasters drawing upon the relief sources of the American Red Cross that any similar period in its history. Thirty-five localities [across the United States] have been struck by floods, tornadoes, explosions, fires and epidemics causing the Red Cross to contribute $200,000 from its national treasury and more than that amount from chapters.”
Montana is no stranger to tornadoes; the Eastern part of the state is often listed as part of America’s “Tornado Alley.” The twisters that hit the state are usually weak and register low on the Enhanced Fujita scale (usually called the “EF scale.”) The EF scale is an enhanced version of Dr. Tetsuya Theodore Fujita’s 1971 which categorizes tornadoes based on the severity of damage they cause. Many Montana tornadoes don’t touch down at all, though some have caused considerable damage. The website Disaster Center, which compiles data and provides online coverage of disasters in the United States, ranks Montana at “number 42 for the frequency of tornadoes, number 39 for fatalities, number 45 for injuries per area and number 45 for costs per area” based on data from 1950 to 1995.