Ice Storms

Picture of Main Street in Marion after the ice storm of January 30th, 1902. You see the Masonic building on the left and the old Court House on the right.

The archives of The Crittenden Press dated Feb. 6th, 1902 tells us that the sleet and snow of the past few days have done much damage. The telephone lines are down all over the city and the streets are covered with ice.

Some of the greatest destruction in the county has been to the fruit trees; the damage to orchards can hardly be estimated, it runs into thousands of dollars. The larger trees are practically denuded of their branches, and this is in all of the orchards. Shade trees and forest trees also suffered the same damage.

And so the day worn along; trees were crashing and breaking, from the great loads of ice, telephone wires and poles and electric light wires were following suit. The trains were lost, so far as telegraphic communication was concerned.

When night came all the old oil lamps in town were brought out, the metal burnished, the oil poured in, and a little strip of red flannel placed in the reservoir of each to give a touch of color, for we were notified early in the day that the electric lights would be an impossibility and we all prepared for the dark, stormy, night.

But we Crittenden Countians have a special knack of making the best of things, and the stories that were told around the fire and the songs that were sung and the glasses that were drained that night, cemented more good fellowship than all the crickets on the hearth ever dreamed of.

We have faith that somehow or other, things will be gotten together, poles will be replaced, wires restrung, and the streets will again hum with people passing and with the traffic of countless wagons with their wealth of fluorspar, of zinc, tobacco, corn and lumber; the sun will shine again and Marion will be as before, the busiest, the loveliest and the best town in Western Kentucky, and it's people will rarely speak of the great ice storm of that January in 1902.