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Look Back: Heat wave of 1936
Date: 8/5/2011 Album ID: 1298131
Photos by Post-Dispatch staff photographers
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by Tim O'Neil --- The heat of July 1936 had been withering and deadly, reaching at least 100 degrees on 18 days. It had killed 332 people by July 30, when cooling breezes soothed raw, sweating faces. The relief didn’t last. A drought that burned the Plains and Midwest restoked itself, pushing the temperature here back to 100 on Aug. 9. On 15 of the next 18 shimmering days, the high would be at least 100. It was 103 or hotter 11 times. On Aug. 18, the high was 106. The summer’s toll was 479 dead of heat, including 29 children.
A family from St. Louis spends a night in rural St. Louis County in July 1936, during a scorching and deadly summer that logged a record 37 days of high temperatures of at least 100. A first wave of heat broke on July 30, but the temperature climbed back to 100 on Aug. 9 and was that hot or worse for another two weeks. Thousands of people fled their stifling brick homes and flats and slept for weeks on the grass in city parks and along quiet country roads. This family tried to find some refuge near Lindbergh Road. The heat of 1936 killed 479 people in the St. Louis area, including 29 children. (Post-Dispatch)
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Children gather at the intersection of Keokuk Street and Michigan Avenue, one block north of Marquette Park, where heat buckled the brick pavement in July 1936. Relentless pounding of the sun caused similar damage throughout the St. Louis area. (Post-Dispatch)
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Mrs. W.E. Johnson works her shriveled potato patch on the family farm north of Columbia, Mo., in July 1936. Only one-fourth of normal rainfall fell that summer, ruining crops and pastures. The heat wave accompanied a drought that covered much of the Midwest and Plains until scattered rainfall finally broke through on Aug. 28. (Post-Dispatch)
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The bare remains of a pasture on the Johnson farm near Columbia in summer 1936. (Post-Dispatch)
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Underfed milk cows linger about a muddy hole that had been a pond on the farm of Ben Buhmeyer near High Hill, Mo., in summer 1936. (Post-Dispatch)
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Mrs. J.S. Sampo of Howard County, Mo., feeds five-day-old orphaned piglets during the heat and drought of summer 1936. The sow that bore them had died of the heat. Mrs. Sampo's family usually fed the piglets with milk, but had to sell their dairy cows because of the drought. Mrs. Sampo feeds the piglets bread soaked in water. Helping her are two of her grandchildren. (Post-Dispatch)
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A Mississippi River ferry is stranded on the St. Louis levee south of the Eads Bridge in July 1936. The river stayed below 0 on the downtown gauge for weeks that summer. (Post-Dispatch)
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H.J. Beer of Columbia, Mo., fills a tank with water from the city water works for a farmer from nearby Hinton in summer 1936. In St. Louis County, farmers paid 44 cents per 1,000 gallons to keep their animals alive. (Post-Dispatch)
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A teamster gives his horse a drink from a bucket on a St. Louis street in summer 1936, The Humane Society of Missouri gave buckets to service stations so horses could quench their thirst during the pounding heat. (Post-Dispatch)
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A farm hand plows the burned-up field of Mrs. Albert Rauscher on Conway Road, west of Mason Road, on Aug. 13, 1936, when the high temperature was 103 degrees. The temperature would be at least 100 on 13 of the next 15 days, and reach 106 degrees Aug. 18. The high that summer was 108 on July 14 during the first wave of the summer's deadly heat. The Rauscher farm was in today's Town and Country. (Post-Dispatch)
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