On Monday, June 1, 1903, a catastrophic tornado struck the city of
Gainesville, Georgia
Gainesville is a city and the county seat of Hall County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 42,296. Because of its large number of poultry processing plants, it has been calle ...
, killing at least 98 people and injuring 180 or more.
The tornado is retrospectively estimated to have been an
F4 on the modern-day Fujita scale.
[Multiple sources:
*
*
] The tornado, which was of very brief duration relative to its intensity, lasted approximately two minutes, and struck a trail roughly long. According to tornado researcher Thomas P. Grazulis, the Gainesville tornado was one of the shortest-tracked F4 tornadoes on record. It skirted the south of the city, starting in the southwest and proceeding northeast, passing through a natural
depression roughly lower than the city itself. The area, which included
cotton mill
A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system.
Although some were driven ...
s, reported about 50 deaths and incurred the worst damage; in this area the intensity of the damage was equivalent to low-end F4 status.
Unlike
a similar event in 1936, the 1903 tornado missed downtown Gainesville.
The tornado, initially appearing along the
train track, was at first thought to be smoke from a train. It struck a cotton mill at 12:45 p.m. local
standard time
Standard time is the synchronization of clocks within a geographical region to a single time standard, rather than a local mean time standard. Generally, standard time agrees with the local mean time at some meridian that passes through the r ...
, ripping off the top floor where a number of children were working, many of them numbering among the fatalities. The power of the tornado ripped an iron
cupola
In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, usually dome-like structure on top of a building often crowning a larger roof or dome. Cupolas often serve as a roof lantern to admit light and air or as a lookout.
The word derives, via Ital ...
from an approximately
standpipe, crushing a number of people when it fell down.
The tornado also damaged the
Gainesville Iron Works Gainesville is the name of several places in the United States of America:
* Gainesville, Alabama
* Gainesville, Arkansas
* Gainesville, Florida, the largest municipality with this name
* Gainesville, Georgia
* Gainesville, Kentucky
* Gainesvil ...
and track, signals and freight cars of the
Southern Railway Company, before destroying approximately 70 of the 120 workers' cottages at the
Pacolet Mills
Pacolet is a town in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 2,235 at the 2010 census.
History
Pacolet had its start in 1859 when the railroad was extended to that point. The name Pacolet may be derived from the Ch ...
in
New Holland, where young children and elderly were located at the time. In total, at least 98—and possibly as many as 104—people were killed and at least 180 injured, with some reports indicating up to 190 injuries. The number of people harmed was reduced due to many workers attending picnics away from the site when the tornado struck.
Almost 33 years later, on April 6, 1936, another violent tornado struck Gainesville, claiming at least 203 lives. Gainesville is the only town of its size to be so devastated twice by tornadoes in its history.
See also
*
1936 Tupelo–Gainesville tornado outbreak — Produced another catastrophic F4 tornado in the same city
*
1998 Gainesville–Stoneville tornado outbreak
A deadly tornado outbreak struck portions of the southeastern United States on March 20, 1998. Particularly hard hit were rural areas outside of Gainesville, Georgia, where at least 12 people were killed in an early morning F3 tornado. The ent ...
Notes
References
Sources
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Gainesville, Georgia
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