Blizzard of 1888 on Long Island
March 12, 2011 marks the 123rd anniversary of the Blizzard of 1888. In New York City, the snow began to fall just after midnight on a Monday and did not stop until Tuesday evening. Hurricane force winds caused whiteout conditions and left snowdrifts two-stories high. On Long Island, the roads became impassable and below freezing temperatures forced people to stay indoors for days. Life-long Freeporter William E. Golder described the storm in his memoirs:
March 12th 1888 was the memorable blizzard [that] afflicted business and traffic! My clerk went to the city on Sunday the 11th and wasn’t able to return until the following Wednesday as there were no trains running to Freeport and no trains out to Riverhead for 2 weeks!
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The Freeport Historical Society recently discovered a series of glass negatives taken after the Blizzard of 1888 in Hempstead. These pictures are available online at http://www.longislandmemories.org/
