What do you think?
The Great Louisville Tornado of 1890
On March 27, 1890, a devastating storm moved over the Ohio River Valley, spawning dozens of deadly tornados. The most powerful of these twisters touched down in Louisville, carving a path of unprecedented destruction from Main Street to the end of town. In the aftermath, nearly eight hundred buildings in the city were destroyed, and over one hundred people perished. In all, the storm produced over twenty-five tornados that day, and it remains the twenty-fifth deadliest storm in U.S. history. Join local author Keven McQueen as he chronicles Louisville's most violent natural disaster, with tales of harrowing rescues and rebuilding.
- GenresHistory
112 pages, Paperback
First published March 10, 2010
About the author
Keven McQueen
31 books50 followersMore information about Keven McQueen is available at his official website, http://www.kevenmcqueenstories.com/
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Read
January 20, 2019(No rating)
April 3, 1974: An F-5 tornado -- the strongest tornado in Kentucky history and one of the most powerful in U.S. history -- destroys the town of Brandenburg, 20 miles southwest of my home at the time. That same storm system spawned a tornado family that moved northeast with funnels sighted passing at or near my house resulting in a new F-4 tornado that touched down about 10 miles past my locale and tore up the county's eastern suburbs, near where I live today.
May 2003: A white wall rotating counter clockwise is seen in my backyard with a corresponding whooshing roar buffeting the house. Before anyone has time to get downstairs it veers off and leaves a short damage path in the neighborhood. It fells a very large old cherry tree on my property, destroying a neighbor's fence, twists the carport roof off the next-door neighbor's house and throws it into my yard, barely missing my bedroom wall, and tears enough shingles off the roof to require a totally new roof be put on. Although never reported as a tornado officially, the insurer who inspected the house and examined the area said it had been a tornado.
January 29, 2008: Working late at my former job on a college campus in Louisville, an EF-1 tornado touches down about 200 yards from my office at about 8 p.m. then skips around the county, touching back down again very close to my house, the same one mentioned above.
January 17, 2012: An EF-1 tornado tracks a west-to-east path a mile north of my house, passing over my sister's house two miles away and knocks down her front-porch overhang among other damage.
June 27, 2018: An EF-1 tornado forms a funnel directly over the steak house where my son works which then touches down about two miles east of my house. I was shopping at Kroger while this was going on, and the store lights were knocked out briefly from the wind, throwing me and my fellow shoppers into darkness.
So yeah, this shit can get real around here in Louisville, KY.
Long before I was born, though -- in the previous century -- the city of Louisville had its greatest tornadic catastrophe, an event barely known to even the area's most historically savvy residents -- one which is commemorated by a little twister-shaped sculpture downtown that most people simply overlook as another piece of public art. But the locals who lived through the great Louisville tornado of 1890 certainly never forgot it. For decades many residents of that generation became very nervous whenever the skies looked at all menacing. The F-4 tornado plowed through the center of the bustling river city and killed more than 100 people, 44 in one collapsed public hall alone. It still ranks as one of the top 30 U.S. tornadoes in lives lost and destruction, even after all these years. The tornado destroyed major facilities, transportation buildings, water utilities, warehouses and whole neighborhoods. In a time when little or no public warnings existed, it seemed like a capricious sort of catastrophe to those on the ground.
This book on that event is a handsome-looking one, well illustrated with views of the destruction. Because it's by a local author with many titles pertaining to local historical subjects to his name -- an obvious labor of love that can't be overly profitable -- I'm going to go easier on the book than I probably ought to. It's the kind of book that completists of local history will want to have for their libraries, partly because it covers a topic that hasn't been addressed in book form before (apart from one done at the time of the event). It's not so much a compelling read as it is a yeoman's job of information collation. The book provides some context by citing tornadic events in the area in years prior to the main event and then provides a virtually minute-by-minute account of the tornado, its path, its victims and its physical effects, along with some comment on the sources from which the information derives. There's a good bibliography in the back providing the ample sources: newspaper articles, reports, survivor accounts and more.
But, if you're looking for a rattling good historical narrative such as you can get in books by, say, Erik Larson, this ain't that book. It's pretty much a by-the-numbers thing and maybe that's all it can be, assuming the sources to be limited somewhat in the amount of detail they contain. It doesn't make for a very scintillating read, though -- in spite of all the death-dealing destruction -- and the cringy humor and awkward segues employed (particularly in the earlier parts of the book) -- come off as disconcerting and distracting. One of the attempts at humor I actually found forced and even tasteless (I paraphrase: Such and such's name was misspelled in the paper but that was the least of his worries, as the tornado carried him away and broke his neck and he died). Close scrutiny makes it furthermore a non sequitur. In another part, someone is described as being "fatally hurt." OK. After detailing some pre-1890 tornadoes, the book then states "Now we come to consider Louisville exclusively." It sounds like something out of a Powerpoint presentation, not an elegant transition for a book. Another passage actually has this as a lumpen segue: "In other news..." These kinds of authorial intrusions break the wall and draw the reader out of the book. And they're not even necessary. As a former editor who routinely returned copy to writers for rewrites, this is precisely the kind of stuff I would have rejected.
A really good book about this event remains to be written. As I said before, it's a herculean job of data collation, and for many that may be more than enough. Perhaps a look at the microfilm and other original sources cited in the back of the book might yield more interesting contextual information. Who knows?
Instead of the book's preamble about other unrelated local tornadoes, I would have set the scene about what Louisville was like at the time; providing an atmospheric sense of the place to prepare me for the drama to come; whisk my imagination back to that time and place and put me there. One could cite the fact that Louisville had one of the nation's first skyscrapers (The Columbia Building, 1890, completed the same year as the tornado) and talk about the city's commerce and its importance as one of the nation's biggest cities at the time. Maybe talk about the history of some of the buildings that ended up getting destroyed. This would have provided some sense of consequence and gravitas when the destruction came. For instance, fleshing out the story of Father TJ Disney, whose life's work of building a church was left in tatters, might have sufficed to establish this kind of story line and emotional weight. It's mentioned but a weightier treatment would have emphasized the personal loss. There are some personal anecdotes stuck toward the back of the book that would have been better exploited by being woven earlier into the narrative. Also, the book alludes to the fact that there WAS a warning given to Louisville by the national weather bureau (the U.S. signal corps) at the time that was mainly unheeded apart from one savvy river pilot (I would have liked to have read more about this guy). It's another potentially intriguing narrative hook that goes unexploited, or, in this case is relegated to the back of the book instead of being at the front where I think it belongs. Talking about how little was known about tornadoes or forecasting at the time sets up the dread for the calamity to follow. Any cheapjack horror movie at least knows this much. The fact that Louisville's 1890 tornado was part of a national 1890 tornado outbreak isn't even mentioned. Some stories from that outbreak in other cities or locales on that day would provide far more interesting context than the other tornadoes discussed earlier in the book. This is why books need competent editors.
I will say, the book improves in the later stages, in the sections pertaining to the aftermath and how the city vigorously got back on its feet, but by this point I was hard to persuade. There are some reader/reviewers who seem to have liked the book, and said so, and if they're happy what can I say?
I'm going to refrain from giving this a star rating, but honestly if I had to rate it for text quality I would only give it one or at best two stars and maybe 2.5 stars overall simply for being the only book around on its subject.
ke/eg '19
April 3, 1974: An F-5 tornado -- the strongest tornado in Kentucky history and one of the most powerful in U.S. history -- destroys the town of Brandenburg, 20 miles southwest of my home at the time. That same storm system spawned a tornado family that moved northeast with funnels sighted passing at or near my house resulting in a new F-4 tornado that touched down about 10 miles past my locale and tore up the county's eastern suburbs, near where I live today.
May 2003: A white wall rotating counter clockwise is seen in my backyard with a corresponding whooshing roar buffeting the house. Before anyone has time to get downstairs it veers off and leaves a short damage path in the neighborhood. It fells a very large old cherry tree on my property, destroying a neighbor's fence, twists the carport roof off the next-door neighbor's house and throws it into my yard, barely missing my bedroom wall, and tears enough shingles off the roof to require a totally new roof be put on. Although never reported as a tornado officially, the insurer who inspected the house and examined the area said it had been a tornado.
January 29, 2008: Working late at my former job on a college campus in Louisville, an EF-1 tornado touches down about 200 yards from my office at about 8 p.m. then skips around the county, touching back down again very close to my house, the same one mentioned above.
January 17, 2012: An EF-1 tornado tracks a west-to-east path a mile north of my house, passing over my sister's house two miles away and knocks down her front-porch overhang among other damage.
June 27, 2018: An EF-1 tornado forms a funnel directly over the steak house where my son works which then touches down about two miles east of my house. I was shopping at Kroger while this was going on, and the store lights were knocked out briefly from the wind, throwing me and my fellow shoppers into darkness.
So yeah, this shit can get real around here in Louisville, KY.
Long before I was born, though -- in the previous century -- the city of Louisville had its greatest tornadic catastrophe, an event barely known to even the area's most historically savvy residents -- one which is commemorated by a little twister-shaped sculpture downtown that most people simply overlook as another piece of public art. But the locals who lived through the great Louisville tornado of 1890 certainly never forgot it. For decades many residents of that generation became very nervous whenever the skies looked at all menacing. The F-4 tornado plowed through the center of the bustling river city and killed more than 100 people, 44 in one collapsed public hall alone. It still ranks as one of the top 30 U.S. tornadoes in lives lost and destruction, even after all these years. The tornado destroyed major facilities, transportation buildings, water utilities, warehouses and whole neighborhoods. In a time when little or no public warnings existed, it seemed like a capricious sort of catastrophe to those on the ground.
This book on that event is a handsome-looking one, well illustrated with views of the destruction. Because it's by a local author with many titles pertaining to local historical subjects to his name -- an obvious labor of love that can't be overly profitable -- I'm going to go easier on the book than I probably ought to. It's the kind of book that completists of local history will want to have for their libraries, partly because it covers a topic that hasn't been addressed in book form before (apart from one done at the time of the event). It's not so much a compelling read as it is a yeoman's job of information collation. The book provides some context by citing tornadic events in the area in years prior to the main event and then provides a virtually minute-by-minute account of the tornado, its path, its victims and its physical effects, along with some comment on the sources from which the information derives. There's a good bibliography in the back providing the ample sources: newspaper articles, reports, survivor accounts and more.
But, if you're looking for a rattling good historical narrative such as you can get in books by, say, Erik Larson, this ain't that book. It's pretty much a by-the-numbers thing and maybe that's all it can be, assuming the sources to be limited somewhat in the amount of detail they contain. It doesn't make for a very scintillating read, though -- in spite of all the death-dealing destruction -- and the cringy humor and awkward segues employed (particularly in the earlier parts of the book) -- come off as disconcerting and distracting. One of the attempts at humor I actually found forced and even tasteless (I paraphrase: Such and such's name was misspelled in the paper but that was the least of his worries, as the tornado carried him away and broke his neck and he died). Close scrutiny makes it furthermore a non sequitur. In another part, someone is described as being "fatally hurt." OK. After detailing some pre-1890 tornadoes, the book then states "Now we come to consider Louisville exclusively." It sounds like something out of a Powerpoint presentation, not an elegant transition for a book. Another passage actually has this as a lumpen segue: "In other news..." These kinds of authorial intrusions break the wall and draw the reader out of the book. And they're not even necessary. As a former editor who routinely returned copy to writers for rewrites, this is precisely the kind of stuff I would have rejected.
A really good book about this event remains to be written. As I said before, it's a herculean job of data collation, and for many that may be more than enough. Perhaps a look at the microfilm and other original sources cited in the back of the book might yield more interesting contextual information. Who knows?
Instead of the book's preamble about other unrelated local tornadoes, I would have set the scene about what Louisville was like at the time; providing an atmospheric sense of the place to prepare me for the drama to come; whisk my imagination back to that time and place and put me there. One could cite the fact that Louisville had one of the nation's first skyscrapers (The Columbia Building, 1890, completed the same year as the tornado) and talk about the city's commerce and its importance as one of the nation's biggest cities at the time. Maybe talk about the history of some of the buildings that ended up getting destroyed. This would have provided some sense of consequence and gravitas when the destruction came. For instance, fleshing out the story of Father TJ Disney, whose life's work of building a church was left in tatters, might have sufficed to establish this kind of story line and emotional weight. It's mentioned but a weightier treatment would have emphasized the personal loss. There are some personal anecdotes stuck toward the back of the book that would have been better exploited by being woven earlier into the narrative. Also, the book alludes to the fact that there WAS a warning given to Louisville by the national weather bureau (the U.S. signal corps) at the time that was mainly unheeded apart from one savvy river pilot (I would have liked to have read more about this guy). It's another potentially intriguing narrative hook that goes unexploited, or, in this case is relegated to the back of the book instead of being at the front where I think it belongs. Talking about how little was known about tornadoes or forecasting at the time sets up the dread for the calamity to follow. Any cheapjack horror movie at least knows this much. The fact that Louisville's 1890 tornado was part of a national 1890 tornado outbreak isn't even mentioned. Some stories from that outbreak in other cities or locales on that day would provide far more interesting context than the other tornadoes discussed earlier in the book. This is why books need competent editors.
I will say, the book improves in the later stages, in the sections pertaining to the aftermath and how the city vigorously got back on its feet, but by this point I was hard to persuade. There are some reader/reviewers who seem to have liked the book, and said so, and if they're happy what can I say?
I'm going to refrain from giving this a star rating, but honestly if I had to rate it for text quality I would only give it one or at best two stars and maybe 2.5 stars overall simply for being the only book around on its subject.
ke/eg '19
March 21, 2017
A great book of a disaster in my home town
I was born in Louisville in 1931 and never heard a word about this tornado from any of the old folks I knew when I was a boy.
I was born in Louisville in 1931 and never heard a word about this tornado from any of the old folks I knew when I was a boy.
January 26, 2016
I really enjoy disaster books as a rule, and this one was no exception. McQueen has provided something with this book I haven't seen before, though: He's talking purely history with no "science of tornadoes" thrown in. Normally, there's at least a nod towards explaining what makes them happen, but this is not McQueen's focus. Rather, he wants to tell the story of the people and the event as gathered from newspaper accounts of the day. The book is a bit shorter than normal as a result of this choice, but it's a directly historical account from primary sources and interesting to read. (Also, the citations section is huge. If you wanted, you could go directly to the source and read where he got everything. It's great!)
One of the complications McQueen encountered was tracking down possible duplicate names for the same people. This comes up repeatedly in the course of his narrative, and I noted the similarity between that problem and problems researching family genealogy - spelling really wasn't set for many names. It makes establishing the true cost of the tornado in terms of human lives hard to pin down. What is known - and McQueen clearly establishes this - is that it was a devastating blow for the city.
I hope more people pick this one up. I found it on Scribd, and it's lesser-known books like this that keep me paying the subscription fee on that app. Five of five stars, and well done Mr. McQueen!
One of the complications McQueen encountered was tracking down possible duplicate names for the same people. This comes up repeatedly in the course of his narrative, and I noted the similarity between that problem and problems researching family genealogy - spelling really wasn't set for many names. It makes establishing the true cost of the tornado in terms of human lives hard to pin down. What is known - and McQueen clearly establishes this - is that it was a devastating blow for the city.
I hope more people pick this one up. I found it on Scribd, and it's lesser-known books like this that keep me paying the subscription fee on that app. Five of five stars, and well done Mr. McQueen!
April 28, 2017
This one was good, if brief. It read more like a long newspaper article than a book. Heavy on facts, light on narrative.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews