This paragraph is offered as an aid to “getting the picture” of the situation endured by the region beginning on January 2, 1949, lasting for weeks, and in some cases, months!
Describing the weather event that would be labeled “The Blizzard of ‘49’ would take page upon page, and we were involved with, and endangered by, the onset of it and, thankfully had reached our destination by the margin, literally, of mere minutes where we, like the rest of the region, spent the duration of the lingering effects of the storm, being snowbound, wondering how much longer it would last. (Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I have included a link to a fifty-some minute documentary. This film, produced  by the state of Wyoming, wyomingpbs.org, puts a “you were there” perspective on the extent of the brutal beating delivered to the area by the storm(s), and the nine weeks to three months it took in digging out “civilization”.)

(Copy and paste the address below for an eyewitness survivors’ compilation):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl6Iz4dXGdg

( 34 )
Historic Cold and Record Snow
Snowing Sideways Can Still Get Deep

The “Lilly-Pad Living” of the last four moves, hopping like a frog from one place to another, and barely staying long enough to get our mail, had Dad looking into other options than the apartment-hunting-renting-cleaning-moving scenario. Mother had a cousin in Tulsa that was in the mobile home business, so they went for a visit to his lot, with the possibility of it turning into a business call. They had their orientation in “Trailer-House 101“, and inspected a variety of makes, models, sizes and styles, and were impressed with the International, all aluminum-clad birch paneled doll-house on wheels, with a compact kitchen, apartment sized stove and refrigerator, Coleman oil furnace, and ingenious use of every square inch of space for storage and built-ins, including end tables with doors and drawers. There was a bedroom in the back with a standard sized bed, built-in dressing vanity, overhead storage, and two closets, and the back exit-door. There was a sleeper-sofa in the front for the boys. We had made-do with much worse, and since it was brand-new, if we happened to find any dirt, it would be OUR dirt! It was only 28 feet long, which was about standard in those days for pulling around the country with the family car. Dad followed the dealer’s recommendations for hitches, extensions for side mirrors, overload springs and other modifications for maximum safety and efficiency in towing, power cords and hoses for hook-ups, blocks and jacks for stabilizing. A walk-through dress rehearsal or two, or three, to flatten the learning curve, and the rest would become second nature with experience. After all the moves we made packing all our belongings into the family sedan, surely this would be a substantial improvement. 

For the trip, most of the boxes we had not yet unpacked were distributed on the floor for a low center of gravity, leaving a walk space, and room to convert the sofa at bedtime, for we planned to stay in the trailer for our “overnights” on our way. Measures were taken for eliminating “forward creep” of the load. The day we left was sunny and bright and we had some dry pavement for Dad to get used to the load, and the handling characteristics of the weight on the rear axle, and the lightness of the front end. When we left the maintenance of the city roads, we began to contend with accumulated snow-pack and ice on the highway.

Upon encountering the first long hill, we found it too icy to reach the crest, and traffic began to back up behind us. The smell of the clutch overheating was an ominous warning of the trouble we could have, but there were few options at this point. With steep drop-offs on each side of the highway, the road was too narrow to attempt any conventional turn-about. Men from the stopped cars stacking up behind us began gathering to get a closer look, or to offer suggestions, and most of them hopeful they could help. Finally they all began gathering at the front of the car, the brawny and the scrawny alike, and took hold to pull, push, or somehow urge the car to turn back down the hill. As the front tires slid across the ice, the trailer began to pivot and at one point backed dangerously closer to the edge of the road. Mom, Wes, and I were safely waiting at a lower point on the hill, watching, in a state of hyperventilation, almost afraid to look. Finally, the car had moved far enough, the backward movement of the trailer had ceased, and it was obediently following down the hill. To select another route, we had to go back to town. On the way, we heard a loud noise and felt a lurch, and upon inspection, Dad found a weld had failed on one of the hitch modifications. Our trip back to town had brought us near to the shop where the work was done. While a bigger part allowing for a stronger weld was being fabricated, the welder’s wife had us wait in their home and recuperate from the hillside ordeal. We never had another problem with any of the modifications after that.

Our first overnight stop went smoothly, a scenario for the textbook. Dad accomplished the electrical and hoses hook-ups, stabilized the trailer with blocks and jacks,  lit the furnace, and turned on the propane so Mom could prepare a simple meal. After supper, we could listen to the radio, and relax in our own home! In the morning we would have toast and oatmeal, bacon and eggs for breakfast, fill Dad’s Thermos with coffee, and make a lunch of sandwiches for the day’s travel. This was beginning to make sense! We made up the sofa-bed and made sure the packed boxes were spaced and stable for traveling, while Dad was rolling up cords and hoses. After Mom was out of the trailer, he would remove the blocks and jacks, but not a minute before. At the slightest quiver of movement beneath her feet, she would have to deal with motion sickness.

The roads we would travel for the rest of our trip had not been  completely clear for weeks, but had remained passable because wide ruts had been worn through the packed snow and ice and kept open by the traffic. This left a ridge of packed snow and ice in the center of each lane that made it difficult and risky to pass another vehicle or change lanes. In those days this was considered normal and acceptable for mid-winter. Plowing was not practical if there was wind with snow on the ground, creating “ground blizzards” which would nullify the plowing by more drifting. Most of the residue was from a hard storm that struck in mid-November, 1948. It had moved very slowly, so that what might have been an ordinary blizzard of the region became a fierce and protracted one. New Year's Day in 1949 was sunny and bright, and forecasters were not predicting any great change, but on Sunday, the afternoon of the 2nd, with holiday travelers making their way homeward, the storm arrived, abruptly, without warning, and it exceeded anything ever before recorded for the combination of  snow, wind velocity, bitterly low temperatures, and duration, lasting seemingly forever!. One article described it this way: “It quickly became impossible to drive, even in town. “Every railroad in the main storm area had been completely snowed in.” Motorists were stranded in tiny spots where supplies were marginal – Rockport, between Greeley and Cheyenne, which had a normal population of 3, gained more than 300 involuntary visitors” Ed Quillen, the Denver Post 

Visibility had been reduced to practically nil, obscuring signs and the landscape, so I’m not sure exactly where we were when it became obvious that we had found ourselves in a developing blizzard. We were in our last day of our trip, and hopefully getting close to our destination. The odometer reading was the only indicator of our progress. Dad was concentrating on keeping his rig in the road by watching about the only thing he could see, the ruts. Mother’s nerves were frazzled and Wes and I had been threatened into an unnatural silence. The wind was howling and visibility was diminishing, but as long as Dad could see those dark ruts ahead of him, he had little option but to keep moving. There were a few filling stations and small stores at crossroads on the highway that were vital to their communities in those days, and at every one, Dad would stop and enquire about conditions ahead. He would be informed, “The mail carrier just came through from so-and-so’s place; past that, I wouldn’t say”. So he would quickly get underway again, because he knew the worst was yet to come. A few times he was tempted to pull up somewhere that he could have electricity, and ride it out in the trailer. The thought of an accident or roadway mishap was too fearful to contemplate, but he was confident that to stop would be a mistake. He was right. Checking at every establishment with signs of life, he would be encouraged to try for the next crossroad, store, or station. The radio was reporting road closures and worsening conditions. And that is the way it was the rest of the way to Casper. We had been in town perhaps twenty minutes when the radio report announced the closure of all roads in and out of town, especially to the South and West, one of the routes we had been traveling.

Thankful to have finally arrived safely and be off the treacherous roadway, shaken but in “one piece”, we  could also be thankful that Dad didn’t give in to the notion of stopping. As it turned out, anything that wasn’t moving got drifted-in, and anything drifted-in would be there for many days, if not weeks. Everyone was needing help, but little was available. With nobody able to get around to supply any aid, the whole region languished and tried to get by with whatever supplies were on hand. Stalled trains had to be dug out by hand; even the plows could not get through.  For weeks the newsreels were showing hay airlifted to cattle and milk airlifted to babies. The final figure for people that perished in all the states affected was 76, with Nebraska being the hardest hit. 

A long-time company employee, Mr. Curley, had rented an office, which he and Dad would share. We had known him and his dad, “Pop” Curley, also an employee, for three or four years so it was a nice reunion. He had made arrangements with the building’s owners for the trailer to be parked and hooked up next to the building, where Mr., Curley, his wife Joyce, and their daughter, Diane, had their apartment, so we would have instant friends and neighbors. Just that quickly, we were off the road, and knew where we would be sleeping that night. In the morning we would “skirt” the trailer with a few layers of roofing felt banked with snow so our floors would stay warmer, we would unpack and Mom would be back to her “place for everything, and everything in its place” style of housekeeping. She was planning a batch of doughnuts so she could invite Joyce and Diane for “coffee”, translate “catching up on the news”, translate “gossip”. I would be off to Washington Elementary School to resume the third grade.

 I couldn’t find a copyright on the following article, so I hope it is public domain. It is quite telling of  the devastation to Wyoming, except for the vast winter-kill of game animal herds, and the other states affected: Colorado, South Dakota, and Nebraska. so I’ll include it here:
      “The "Blizzard of 1949" refers to a storm that occurred in the first week of January, 1949.  However, the entire month of January was stormy. Seventeen people perished, along with 55,000 head of cattle and more than 105,000 sheep. That was an estimated loss of 15 percent of the state’s cattle. As the storm continued, Wyoming cities began to run out of food in the stores. Several other blizzards followed the first. It is estimated from reports of field men that 4,194 people received aid through the U.S. Department of the Interior operations, and that help was given to 994 ranches. Seventeen people lost their lives during the storm, the greatest loss of life documented for a winter storm. Total economic loss is estimated at more than $9 million. In 2006 dollars, the economic loss would be more than $75.5 million. ( These figures are represented in 1949 dollars.)