Correspondence and pictures from Roberta Ridgway.

I lived in Dalhart, Texas in March of 1957.
My husband was a minister and left me  and my year old son about 7PM on Friday night to go 17 miles into the country to visit a family.  The storm began around 7:30 PM and progressively got worse during the night.  He  did not come home by morning so I called  the folks he went to visit. They advised me that he had left the evening before, so I called the Sheriff Dept. to report him missing. 

They began the search and  finally found his car beside the road, completely covered with snow, but he was not in it.  On Sunday AM, fearing the worst, one of the ladies from the church came to stay with me.

 
On Sunday afternoon, my husband was found safe with a gentleman who had picked him up and gone to a farmhouse to help a relative  take care of livestock.  They had no communication so there was no way to let anyone know where they were.  There were snowdrifts as high as the eaves of the houses. There was a news headline about the Dalhart preacher lost in the storm.

They said this storm was the worst in 40 years.  Some people near Amarillo, Texas died, not because of frigid cold, but because they were asphyxiated when they left their car engines running to keep warm and snow covered the exhaust pipes.  . There were snowdrifts as high as the eaves of the houses. They said this storm was the worst in 40 years.

The photos we took were probably taken the next day.  In March of 2007 that will  have been 50 years ago.