“Small towns take care of their own,” wrote author Barbara Perkins. “I know that from having lived in small towns.”

A treacherous low-pressure system had been moving across the Edwards Plateau on April 12, 1927, when all hell broke loose near Rocksprings, Texas.

Perkins chronicles that hell, in her book Shattered Spring 1927: The People’s Story of the F5 Tornado that Ravaged Rocksprings, Texas.

That evening, a music recital was scheduled upstairs on the second floor of the high-school. Town folks were excitedly preparing to attend as the fierce historical storm approached from the northwest.

Resident Claud Gilmer saw  “huge jagged pieces of ice started falling. They must have weighed 10 or 12 pounds…Suddenly the wind just stopped and there was an eerie dead calm. By this time every light in town had been knocked out—power gone—and it was pitch black.”

“By this time there was a terrible lightning storm—one crash after another,” Gilmer recalled. “I was looking out the west  window and in one flash I saw the Presbyterian Church and parsonage still standing. On the next flash, they were gone…”

A 14-year-old girl, Leona Wittenberg, was taking a bath when the tornado hit.

The tub was sucked up into the storm and flew her about two miles in the bathtub and landed in a debris field.

As the 100th anniversary of the event approaches, debris from the disaster still lays in that field.

The description of Perkins’ account provides a summary of how “a blustery, gritty wind had been blowing all day and the townspeople were expecting rain. Three miles northwest of town, a monster tornado descended from the clouds. It took direct aim at Rocksprings, population 800.”

“The first warning the townspeople had was the thunderous hail, breaking windows and crashing through rooftops.”

“Moments later, at 7:50 p.m., the F5 tornado, now a mile wide, unleashed its fury with winds of over 260 miles per hour, destroying nearly everything in its path. In less than ten minutes, it was all over.”

“The town was in ruins, lit only by a fierce lightning storm and the buildings that were burning. Almost 80 people were dead, dying or missing. Some were never found. Over 150 were injured.”

“The torrential rain rendered many roads almost impassable. Yet rescuers came from all over to help. Over the next several days, the severely injured and dying were transported to San Antonio, 140 miles away, by cars, trucks, ambulances, and trains.”

“Gathered from personal accounts and historical records, this is the first book to tell the story of the tornado and the people who suffered through the Rocksprings tornado and those who came to their aid. The F5 tornado still ranks as the third deadliest in Texas since 1900.”

This deadly tornado, like the first and second worst in Texas history, occurred well south of what is generally considered by weather experts and popular lore as ” Tornado Alley.”

Since 1950, when official record keeping began, the National Weather Service has determined that 59 tornadoes qualify as F5, six of them in Texas:

The damage scale for twisters goes from F0 to F5, with EF5s inflicting the most damage.

Rocksprings, about 100 miles west of San Antonio, became the seat of Edwards County in 1891, complete with a courthouse. Townspeople built a public school in 1893, and by 1914, the town had 500 residents, a hotel, saloons, a general store and bank. Their high school opened in 1916.

On that late afternoon in 1927, enormous black clouds gathered, producing large hail and winds that took out the power. The tornado touched down 3 miles to the northwest and moved southeast, growing to almost a mile wide as it crossed Rocksprings. It continued southeastward for at least 35 miles and may have traveled as far as 65 miles.

Within those terrifying minutes, the destruction  decimated 235 of the 247 buildings in town. Entire structures were blown down and into pieces with the people still inside of them, while hail the “size of dinner plates” rained down from the sky.

In all, 74 people died, 205 were injured (nearly one-third of the population), and many more without contact to the outside world or a way to easily get help via the rough roads and downed telephone lines.

“Houses were sucked into the air and smashed into the ground. Automobiles were tossed like toys. Trees, posts, and debris were rammed through people and buildings. Debris was piled over victims. Pieces of flesh and blood were splattered everywhere…”

Residents searched for survivors in the darkness, with only matches from their pockets or fires of destroyed buildings to light their way. As daylight broke over the Edwards plateau, those souls who remained were left in shock at the total devastation they saw.

After it was safe, the local telephone operator, Gladys Laurie, and her uncle, Foster Owens, a lineman, had to go out of town in her Model T to find a live telephone line (he hooked a phone to that line) to tell the rest of the world about the disaster.

Later, another operator, Emma Rose, worked into the night, but eventually gave up because her left arm and side felt paralyzed.

Search parties were set up and the deceased were taken to temporary morgues in the courthouse and local bank.

The first bodies were two young girls with their arms wrapped around each other.

Later, the men brought two children that they thought belonged to a deceased couple, Gus and Mettie Henderson.

“It was difficult to identity people due to their horrific injuries and because of the dirt and gravel that was ground into the skin,” Perkins wrote.

“‘No,’ another man told them, ‘those are my children.'”

Although initially struggling on their own, Rocksprings eventually saw human goodness from distant places. 1,000 doses of tetanus vaccine were flown in from San Antonio’s Kelly Field, via pilots who airdropped them into town.

People came from throughout the surrounding countryside (even the Mexico Blue Cross) to help. The first rescuers were soldiers on horseback from Fort Clark, in Bracketville (over 60 miles away, but half a day travel when passable in 1927).

By 4 a.m., the following day, after a road from Bracketville was finally passable, over 20 trucks loaded with tents, 500 cots, blankets, medical supplies and rations went across.

Indian Creek, between Uvalde and Rocksprings was flooded. One doctor was carried across the water on the back of a man who helped rope some cars through the creek.

As more doctors and help arrived, they searched through the temporary morgues and actually found several people still alive. Taken to temporary makeshift hospitals, some survived.

All of the churches had been destroyed, the telegraph/telephone office was gone, trees had been snapped in half like toothpicks, and the water tower had collapsed, likely drowning many in the flash flood that itself had created.

Caskets for the dead were built by local men, and a mass grave was dug in the Rocksprings Cemetery by the Texas Highway Department.  They had to use dynamite to blast holes in the limestone rock just below the soil for grave.

In true west Texas spirit, the town quickly replaced the school with a larger one and rebuilt churches and the hotel.

The latest census shows there are 901 residents, down from a population of 1,182 in 2010.

For decades, visitors know Rocksprings as the Angora Goat Capital of the World and for the nearby Devil’s Sinkhole State Natural Area, famous for a seasonal population of 3 million Mexican free-tailed bats.

Perkins mentions the Devil’s Sinkhole regarding Slick Owens and his wife, Ray Estelle. He told her “that they had to go to the cave. He took her arm in a steel grip as she was being blown about like a loose piece of corrugated tin from the roof of the goat shed.”

“She told him she didn’t want to go to the cave because she was afraid of rattlesnakes.”

“Slick drug her to the cave anyway.”

For the 94th anniversary of the Rocksprings Tornado David Bourland, the grandson of James Bourland, who died as a result of injuries from the tornado, sent an account from his family to the Edwards County Historical Society.

“It was 1927, my dad was eight and my uncle Bill was 6 1/2,” Bourland wrote. “My grandmother had just washed the boys’ feet. She threw the water off the back porch, and it all blew back on her. My grandfather must’ve recognized what was going on very quickly. He got everybody in the bathtub and may have gotten a mattress on top of them, too. His actions helped save their lives.”

“The house was picked up and dropped,” he continued. “It ended up across the street on top of the Post Office. My dad was unhurt, my uncle had a minor ankle injury…My grandmother was hurt badly. She had a serious shoulder injury and would lose her right thumb. She would need several surgeries to repair the damage.”

Bourland’s grandfather,though hit in  the head; by a glancing blow, “wasn’t thought to be serious. He carried them to the courthouse. It was made of brick and one of the few buildings with little damage. People naturally gathered there.”

“I don’t know if he took my grandmother first and then the boys or the other way around. He carried my dad and uncle at the same time. Dad remembers he had to wade through some water about ankle deep in the street…At the courthouse a man was pounding on a locked door to get in and my dad asked his dad if it was going to start again. Everyone who was not injured scrambled to do what they could.”

“A convoy of trucks took injured to Uvalde about 70 miles away. From there a special train took them to San Antonio. The injured were labeled C, P or H and divided that way to the three hospitals in San Antonio, C = the Catholic Hospital, P for Protestant and H for Hebrew. Decades later Dad and Uncle Bill went back to Rocksprings to learn what they could and fill in their gaps of knowledge.”

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Read the true story, THE TORNADO THAT KILLED MY FRIEND, one of our most read articles here. The actual tornado part is near the end of the article.

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