Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: January 1983 Volume 21 Number 1, Pages 17–26

When the Record Snowfall Buried the Upper Main Line

• Club Members Remember, The Record Snowfall of 1958

Page 17

The U, S. Weather Bureau's forecast for Philadelphia and vicinity for Wednesday, March 19, 1958 called for "Mostly cloudy and cool today, with some light rain in the morning. Tomorrow mostly fair and continued cool. High today 45, low tonight 32. Northeast winds 10 to 20 miles an hour today."

By half past nine the following morning, the snow on the ground in West Chester was officially measured at 25 inches. Unofficial measurements in Paoli showed depths of as much as three feet!

The unexpected storm surpassed all previously recorded snows, including the former all-time record storm of Christmas Day in 1909, officially measured at 21 inches, as well as the well-known Blizzard of 1888 of seventy years earlier.

By early Wednesday evening traffic, even on the Lincoln Highway, was virtually at a standstill, the police reporting major tie-ups on both Route 30 and Route 202 (now Bear Hill Road and the Paoli Pike). The hill at Devon on the Lincoln Highway, for many years a bottleneck when snows came, was completely blocked by stalled and abandoned cars and trucks.

Emergency shelters were set up along Route 30 to provide food and sleeping accommodations for snowbound travelers, truck drivers, and marooned families. Nearly 100 persons were taken care of at these shelters at the building of the Paoli Branch of the American Red Cross and the Fire House in Berwyn, the Fire House in Paoli, and the Presbyterian Church in Frazer.

Page 18

Page 19

Food, cots, and bedding were supplied by the Red Cross, Another twenty-two persons were accommodated at the Paoli Inn, which Paul Ferrari, its owner, opened especially to help out in the emergency. Other churches in the area also called the Red Cross to volunteer their facilities, but fortunately additional shelters were not needed. As the storm caught visiting families or couples by surprise, however, there were also a number of unexpected guests and surprised hosts throughout the area for a couple of days!

The snow was an extremely wet and heavy one, sticking to everything it fell on. Its weight, coupled with the predicted winds, resulted in many broken branches and fallen trees, causing thousands of families to be without electric power or telephone service and hampering road clearing and repair operations. Both the electric company and the telephone company put on many extra emergency crews, bringing in repairmen from as far away as Ohio, and even using helicopters to locate trouble spots and expedite repair work. Nonetheless, some families were without service for three or four days, and in a few cases in the Great Valley for an even longer period of time.

The Berwyn and Paoli fire companies were also busy on both Thursday and Friday, using their equipment to get through the deep snow to aid families that were stranded, especially those in the more remote sections. They operated virtually around the clock, taking people from homes without heat, as a result of the power failures, to the homes of more fortunate relatives or friends, and delivering Red Cross food packages or other needed supplies to other marooned families who could not get out or who preferred to stay in their homes.

Several local grocers also attempted emergency deliveries, at least to the end of the snowbound family's lane; one, Paul Burkey in Paoli, took a shotgun with him, firing it when the food was dropped off, to let the householder know when to brave the snow and come out the lane to pick up the order.

Some of these rural families solved their transportation problems in the old-fashioned way, by putting saddles on their horses and riding in to town. There were also several horse-drawn sleighs seen in Paoli the following day.

The shelter and relief operations following the storm were coordinated through an emergency program set up by the Tri-Township Civil Defense Council, serving Tredyffrin, Easttown and Willistown townships, and the Red Cross. In appreciation of this volunteer work, the director of the Civil Defense Council, Admiral Lester Hundt, was quoted as observing, "You cannot give too much credit to these fire companies. They did a marvellous job. So did the road crews in Tredyffrin, Easttown, and Willistown townships, and the supervisors too."

Page 20

Aided by thawing weather, by Sunday it was reported that all the primary and secondary roads, as well as all but about 5% of the rural roads, had been opened up by the hard-working road crews. Now the problem was a possibility of flooding, as the record snow continued to melt!

By the following week, conditions were almost back to normal - except for the damage done to many trees and shrubs. E. G. Pyle, the Park Superintendent at Valley Forge, estimated that more than 5,000 dogwoods, or about ten per cent of the dogwood trees in the Park, were ruined by the snow, with heavy damage suffered by many others.

Ironically, at the Philadelphia airport there were only four inches of snow recorded. But even that somehow seemed scarcely appropriate for the day before the first day of Spring - when in 1958 a record snowfall buried the upper Main Line and Chester County!

Club Members Remember, The Record Snowfall of 1958

Elizabeth Rumrill

It has been said there is nothing one forgets sooner than weather, but occasionally circumstances change this.

The date was March 19, 1958. As I recall it, it was cloudy early in the day and a bit on the cool side, perhaps in the low forties. By noon, in the city, it was snowing lightly, melting as rapidly as it fell.

We were finished at five o'clock, and shortly after that I was on my way to the subway, bound for Suburban Station and the 5:43 "skip-stop" to Berwyn. I generally read the "Bulletin" on the way home, but happened to look out the window as we stopped at Rosemont. I couldn't believe my eyes! The ground, bushes, and trees were thick with snow.

It was Wednesday and our Choir rehearsal night. Bennett Andrews was the organist and Choirmaster then, and he and his wife Florence came along as usual to pick me up. We made it to St. Peter's, but only one or two others showed up.

Page 21

So we came home again, by way of St. John's and Yellow Springs roads, to avoid DeAddio's Hill. But when we reached Howellville, it wasn't possible to get up the hill. This was in the days before snow tires, but Bennett had chains in the trunk. Putting them on was a job! The snow came down steadily as he struggled to get the ends together - almost there and one end would slip! Finally, mission accomplished, we made it up the hill out of the valley, and turned onto Conestoga Road.

It was a wet snow, and when we got to my home I couldn't get in. At length I managed to plough a way between the bushes and, reaching the wall, crept across the snow to the door.

The next morning, all was a fairy-land in the bright spring sunshine. The temperature rose and the snow started to melt rapidly - but not before I had measured it, three feet deep, in the back yard.

Linda McNeil

I can remember the delight of missing school for an entire week when that snow fell! I was in the ninth grade at the time. As we all know, snow days are important to school children.

However, the first few days were confining, as we (my parents and I) were all barricaded into our house. There was so much snow that it was impossible to open any of the doors on the first floor. When the weather cleared, I was able to crawl out of a bedroom window of our split-level home. The snow plow had not yet been down our street, and some of the drifts were over my waist (I was 5'7" tall in height.

After I got out, I was able to walk to Berwyn to the store. Lancaster Pike was virtually closed down. There was almost no traffic, except for emergency vehicles and a few horse-drawn sleighs.

Loss of heat was a common problem during the snowstorm. We were lucky because we lost our electricity for only one day.

Aside from the hardships imposed by such a severe storm, it was really a beautiful snowstorm. The landscapes were picturesque - and the snow was great for making snowmen and igloos.

Barbara Fry

My husband Herb's diary shows that he made it home on Wednesday night, but that the trains did not run on Thursday and he finally made it back into the office in Philadelphia again at 11:30 a.m. on Friday. This is the only time we can recall in our thirty years in this area that the trains did not run because of the weather.

Page 22

We lived at that time on Midland Avenue in Berwyn, two blocks from the Lancaster Pike. The snow plows cleared only every other street, to make it possible for emergency vehicles to get through to most areas in downtown Berwyn.

My parents were visiting us from Binghamton, New York. As was their custom, they left after dinner to spend the night at the Tally-Ho Motel on what was then Route 202, down by the Music Fair. (Since the Fry boys were at this time one, two, and five years old, the grandparents usually chose this way to escape from the lively household for a few hours.) Little did they realize that they would be marooned on a short stretch of 202 for two days. Tractor-trailers were jack-knifed and blocking any way out, either on Paoli hill or at King of Prussia.

The Tally-Ho became a refuge for a number of stranded travelers. Neither the state nor the township had snow removal equipment that could move the wet, heavy March snow. People who lived further north and were used to snow all winter long had difficulty believing (and accepting) that they could be so inconvenienced by one day of snow. The ineffectiveness of the snow removal process at this time finally led to the purchase of more and stronger equipment for the future by both Tredyffrin and Easttown townships.

Janet Malin

It was a great surprise to wake up and find that the heavy, wet, deep snow that had started the previous day had bent all the trees down almost to the ground and broken a number of branches.

My husband was superintendent of the Phoenixville Water Works and also Borough electrician at the time. He was called early in the morning, but could not get his little truck out as no snow plows could come down our part of the road, with the covered bridge on one side and the bridge over the Reading Railroad spur to Kimberton on the other. He called in to Borough Hall, and then walked over the bridge and up to Route 23, at which point the police car picked him up. It was part of his job to monitor the fire alarm system which was owned and maintained by the Bell Telephone Company, though it was my husband's responsibility to know and search out any trouble or broken wires and to fix them. It was also his responsibility to see that adequate water was available at all times, in case of fire.

Page 23

I could not, of course, get out to go to my job at the Valley Forge Army Hospital - nor could any of the other clerks. Our supervisor, Mrs. William J. Gordon, lived in Charlestown Village, on the property that contained the old blacksmith shop and forge. When she and her husband looked out their front window that morning they discovered that the weight of the snow haci caved in the entire roof of the forge! It was most unfortunate, and quite an expense to repair it.

We had no electricity and no heat for five days, but we had a little kerosene space heater which I took up to the bathroom to heat water to wash. I also made coffee and hot cereal and toasted bread on the top of it. It made the room warm enough to bathe and dress, and we wore lots of sweaters and were able to be about, although chilly. I also cooked a beef stew on top of the little stove, and heated canned soups to keep warm.

Our current was not restored until Sunday afternoon. Since we were also without water, as our pump was electric, we carried in buckets of snow for sanitary purposes, and "made do". The Philadelphia Electric linemen worked around the clock to try to restore service, many working 48 hours or more. Some had to be put in the hospital due to exhaustion.

I finally got to the office on Friday, at around noon, after someone with a snow plow on a 4-wheel drive Jeep came and ploughed out our part of the road. When I walked into the office, Major Williams, our Transportation Officer, said, "Boy, am I glad to see you! I have been having a time with irate personnel wanting to know where their household goods and baggage are, and carriers and moving companies calling to say their trucks are detained, and one van company calling to say the roof of a van had caved in with the weight of the snow and its contents were all wet, and freight carriers calling to say shipments would be delayed. Now, at least, I have you to help me." So I pitched in and answered phones and wrote transportation requests and traced, shipments for household goods and supplies due in to the hospital.

One of the things we learned was that a large trailer and tractor had been parked on the weigh station scales somewhere down near Oxford to wait out the storm. When the weighmaster finally came in that day, the truck, with about 18 inches of snow on the roof, weighed more than 54,000 pounds in excess of its own weight! (The moving company with the van with its roof caved in also called to say that it had removed the household goods from the van and that there was little damage as the furniture pads had absorbed most of the melted snow. This was good news for the owner as well as the moving company, though the company would probably not have been liable as the storm was an "act of God".)

We lost five branches from one pine tree and several others from another one, and weren't very good at cooking on the top of the oil stove - but we lived through five days of cold house, cold water, and so forth until Sunday, when we were invited out for a venison dinner at a friend's home. When we got home, our current had been restored. My mother, who was living with us at this time, had a house in Phoenixville with a coal heater, and went there for a few days until we got our heater started again.

Page 24

Fortunately, it became quite spring-like in a few days, and the snow melted away and nothing froze. When I came home from work on Monday, the early daffodils were coming into bloom in the yard. All in all, it was quite an experience, especially coming when everyone was convinced that spring was here and planning gardens and getting ready for spring and summer. Suddenly we were back in what seemed to be the middle of winter!

So much for the Big Snow of 1958.

One other note: Mrs. Gordon, my supervisor, was the former Edythe Stoehner, whom some of the club members may recall had lived in Berwyn as a girl and graduated from T-E in about 1921. She had worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad up until about 1941, when her husband went into the army. (Her husband, Bill Gordon, is the son of the sexton at Great Valley Presbyterian Church.) They came to work at Valley Forge Army Hospital when it opened in 1942. They bought the property in Charlestown from Mr. Worthly, who was a blacksmith, and who made the reproductions from the originals of the wrought iron hardware in Stirling's Quarters when my father restored it for the Liggets in 1926 and 1927. Mr. Worthly was a true artisan, and made all the hinges, latches and bolts for Stirling's Quarters. He also made other hardware of this type for other houses my father designed or restored. (So much for the blacksmith who wasn't around for the Big Snow of 1958!)

Mildred Kirkner

My recollections of the 1958 storm are mainly of the fact that Daylesford Village, where I live, was completely cut off from the "outside world" for several days. The snow drifts on Irish Road, in front of Conestoga High School, were two to three feet deep. To compound the situation, a water main broke, and the water mixed with the snow made a mass of ice where the road should have been.

I recall that a woman in the village was seriously ill, and had to be transported to the hospital by helicopter.

Our greatest concern was over the fact that fire engines would not have been able to get into the village if there had been a fire - but fortunately no such emergency arose.

Page 25

Grace Winthrop

It was still snowing, in about the middle of the second day, when our electricity went off. We cook as well as heat with electricity, so we immediately threw another log in the fire place as I started to think about supper. We didn't have much around the house that could be cooked over an open fire, so George decided he would go down to the corner store, about two blocks away. He and our dog Rusty, a large collie, set out in about three feet of snow after some hamburger. He came back with the meat in chunks; by the time the butcher had cut the meat into pieces and was taking it to the grinder, his electricity also went off. (This was when the butcher ground your hamburger while you waited.)

We called our neighbor on the next street, and they invited us to bring our meat and coffee pot over there, as they still had power. George pushed his way through the snow in the back yard, carrying the pot over his head. By the time he arrived there, their electricity was off too! Actually, we got our gas and electricity back before our neighbors did, so we all had a big dinner at our house the next day.

Libby Weaver

I remember several incidents that happened at the time of the 1958 snow storm. Electricity was off for several days. Our 12 cubic foot freezer was at least two-thirds full, and we knew that even if we did not raise the lid, in a couple of days the food would start to thaw. I removed the food from the freezer and put it on trays and in pans and pails which I then buried in the snow in the back yard. Of course, the electricity came on shortly afterwards!

We felt quite fortunate insofar as heat was concerned, as we were still burning coal. We were almost ashamed to talk to our relatives and friends who were shivering without heat.

Our youngest daughter, Dale, developed a cold and high fever. We had to call a doctor in Paoli, and he came to our home on Swedesford Road in Frazer. A neighbor plowed the drive for us before the township snow plow could plow us out, so he could get to us.

Wally was working at the Devereux School in Downingtown and stayed there several nights. The cook could not get to work, so Wally and "the boys" did the cooking. Finally a friend of ours brought him home in his Jeep.

Elizabeth Goshorn

It was either after this particular snowstorm or another unusually heavy storm in February that year that Bob called shortly after he had arrived in his office in Philadelphia, "You've got to go down and look at the Daylesford underpass," he told me.

Page 26

I could think of absolutely no reason why I should go out to look at the underpass. But assuming that he had some basis for his not-too-subtle suggestion, I put on my snow suit and boots and walked down our snow-filled ridge road towards the Daylesford station.

What a sight met my eyes at the point where old Lancaster Road dips down under the railroad tracks to join the Lincoln Highway, Sitting on the slope, buried in virgin snow almost to its roof, was an abandoned car. As I looked in sheer amazement, two men walked briskly towards me. "Is that your car?" they asked. I could scarcely believe the question: the snow around the car was absolutely unbroken. "What great detectives they'd make!" I thought to myself.

Then I saw the underpass. It was completely blocked by the snow! The drifts had filled in its full 11'9" advertised clearance. The only way to get to the Lincoln Highway from there was to walk over the railroad tracks, not under them.

As it turned out, I needn't have hurried so to see it. Having cleared both the bridge over the railroad at Bridge Street in Berwyn to the east and the underpass on Route 202 (now Bear Hill Road) in Paoli to the west, the Highway Department just left the snow in the Daylesford underpass there until it melted.