Local History: A 1923 tornado hits Jackson

The image attached to this column is from the Jackson Heritage Association collection, housed at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, and it piqued my interest.

I’ve been researching the 1908 courthouse a lot lately since the renovation has reached substantial completion and county offices will begin moving in once they have the all-clear. The Archive Center is across the street, so we’ve had a front-row seat to the renovations and goings-on. It is front of mind these days. Between that and the fact that March is in tornado season here, the picture of a lineman working on utility poles over a gravel Main Street whose caption mentioned a tornado. Well, I had to write about it.

It was March 1923. The city of Jackson, county seat of Cape Girardeau County, was hit by a devastating tornado. The population was between 2,100 and 3,000 people, as opposed to today’s more than 15,000, and the path of devastation was two blocks wide, right through the town center — what is today the Uptown Jackson Historic District. Residences were destroyed, roofs ripped from buildings and windows broken, but the 1908 courthouse sustained no damage, even though Jones Drug Store across the street suffered a broken storefront window.

According to the Southeast Missourian’s coverage of the storm at the time, the tornado did weird things. A house would be undamaged, but the outbuilding missing; a garage would be torn to bits but the car within unscathed.

The tornado touched down near the City Cemetery and moved northeast through town, destroying the Episcopal Church at the modern-day intersection of East Washington and North Ohio streets, then the corner of First North and First East streets — not so far from the Archive Center, which was still 67 years in the future, then.

The storm also ripped off the roofs of the Milde Bottling Company (later the Coca-Cola bottling plant, present-day County Administrative Building at 1 Barton Square) and the Gockel livery barn, where the Archive Center now stands.

Also destroyed was the Masonic Lodge hall at High and First South, now High and West Adams streets, which was razed during the cleanup effort.

The 1923 tornado caused $100,000 in damage, equivalent to $1.8 million in today’s dollars.

I got a bit derailed researching for this article. The Southeast Missourian’s coverage includes mention of buildings destroyed, and their addresses but, at the time, Jackson’s city streets were named for the associated cardinal direction, plus the order they were in, so First West Street, Third North Street, centered at the 1908 courthouse.

At some point a couple of decades later, those names were changed, mostly to honor former U.S. presidents and other states. The 1941 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Jackson, online at the Library of Congress’ website, shows the streets’ original names. That’s the latest Sanborn map on the Library of Congress’ site. The 1950 phone directory for Jackson shows original names, and the 1956 phone book shows the modern names. If anyone has clarity on when exactly that change occurred, please let me know.

Link to related semissourian.com article: www.semissourian.com/news/1923-storm-wrecks-jackson-buildings-100000-loss-is-sustained-by-sunday-storm-mrs-cf-brennecke-badly-hurt-2751989

Link to Library of Congress Sanborn maps of Cape Girardeau County: www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps/?q=cape+girardeau+county

Marybeth Niederkorn is the director of the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson. She is a member of various societies devoted to the region’s history, and is on Jackson’s Historic Preservation Commission. Educated at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, she holds degrees in philosophy and professional writing.