On Wednesday, February 22, 1922, Marion, the rest of the state, and a large swath of the Midwest, awoke to a glittering, ice laden, and broken world. Just outside the door the icing event of the 20th century had coated everything with nearly an inch of ice. This storm is remembered numerically as the Great Ice Storm of 2-22-22. It is recalled each year by weathermen, journalists and historians alike. Apparently, there has not been an icing event to match the scope of this whopper storm since.
From one end of the state to the other Michigan was coated in ice; heavy, commerce debilitating ice. It took down electric, telephone and telegraph poles and wires; countless acres of trees were bent, broken and destroyed. Ice caused damage to buildings from the weight. Uprooted and broken trees blocked roads and railways. It brought a horse and Model T society to a standstill for a while.
The ice did not interfere greatly with life on the farm, other than the job of getting safely to and from the barn to do chores. Rural electricity was not widely spread in 1922. Wood and coal heat and kerosene lamps meant home was as cozy as ever.
The electric supply to the Village from Stone’s Dam, west of town, was not a 24-hour operation and power was limited daily. When the lights went out, Marionites either maintained their own power plant, or were prepared to light the kerosene lamps and throw another log into the fire, businesses included. The power was cut each evening after the lights flashed three times. Marion did not have regular 24-hour electrical service until 1927.
The school was closed for several days so that the many broken trees could be removed from the yard. Trains were unable to run until tracks were clear and it was not safe to bring a horse out until the ice melted from the streets and roads. Life went on pretty much as usual, just a little more cautiously. There wasn’t much to do until the weather eased up and mobility returned. All across town residents found a start on next seasons’ fire wood right at their doorstep or perhaps on it.
Trees and miles of downed telephone and telegraph lines were the big losers everywhere. In town the lines lay, coated in thick ice, entangled in broken trees and snapped poles, all the way to the switchboard office above the bank. It took several weeks for service to be restored to all. The equivalent today would be the collapse of hundreds of telecommunications towers. Among the many photographs from this event are scenes of the extreme damage to telephone lines everywhere.
When we lived in Flushing we got a taste of what the 1922 ice storm was like, complete with an ice laden, uprooted tree on our garage. In February 1975, Lower Michigan, below a line roughly from Bay City to Ludington, experienced a heavy and destructive ice storm. It wreaked havoc on the state’s metropolitan cities with the immediate effects lasting several days. No heat, no power and no phones for hundreds of thousands of folks.
Repairmen came from neighboring states and worked day and night to return things to the status quo as soon as possible. Snapped poles were swiftly replaced and wires restrung. Trees everywhere took a beating. The countryside looked as though there had been bombing raids. Each winter, for more than fifteen years, the scars from this storm were exposed with the falling of the leaves.
Fortunately, for the many without heat, the weather remained unusually warm and the ice retreated. We went to work cutting the tree from our garage. Exactly two weeks later Mom Nature got together with Old Man Winter and threw us a dandy and official blizzard.
The monster ice storm of 1922 remains a legend, the granddaddy of them all. In family photo albums and postcard collections across Michigan there are reminders of this weather event. Family stories were handed down.
If another Great Ice Storm were to occur any time soon, we would have advanced warning, but the havoc could certainly be much the same. Trees and power lines would surely come down, and some towers, maybe. Travel anywhere would come to a standstill for a while and the hum of home generators would be heard across the land.
This photo is looking north on Carland St. from Main St.