Shortly after 5:00 P.M. On Wednesday, May 27, 1896, a Herculean
tornado shattered the St. Louis Area. Within twenty minutes, 137
people had perished in St. Louis, with 118 dead across the river
in East St. Louis. Along a ten-mile swath of devastation, the
tornado destroyed 311 buildings, heavily damaged 7,200 others
and caused significant harm to 1,300 more. Even today, that
powerful cyclone of a century ago "remains the single deadliest
incident to befall the St. Louis area," according to Tim O’Neil
of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who wrote the foreword for this
historic reprint of a book originally published by the Cyclone
Publishing Company. Heavily illustrated by photographs of the
damage, The Great Cyclone was compiled from stories in the
city’s daily newspapers—the Globe-Democrat, the Post-Dispatch,
and, most notably, the old St. Louis Republic. O’Neil points out
that "the book’s compilers are not identified, but their glowing
praise of the ‘superb descriptive composition’ in the Republic
provides a goo