The Historical Museum has two pictures that may have been taken shortly after the great tornado that struck Cisco on April 28, 1893. These photos were taken by the Dublin photographer named Wiseman. I have been told his studio was on the second story of the Utterback building on Patrick Street. The Dublin Progress stated that Wiseman was one of the first photographers on the scene to document the destruction that the F-4 tornado did on that day. The tornado damaged or destroyed nearly every home and business virtually wiping the town off the map. (Wikipedia, Cisco, Texas) They say that the tornado lasted only 2 minutes, but in that time 28 people were killed and hundreds injured. (Dublin Progress, May 5, 1893) The first photo was taken in the middle of what is now highway 183 of the Red Front Drug Store. The brick structure still stands as one of the cities historic buildings. Many other damaged buildings shown in the photo no longer exist.
The second photo appears to be of a Texas Central evacuation train returning shortly after the destruction. In Cisco, the railroad tracks were damaged by the tornado, a 20 ton steam engine was derailed and fully loaded train cars were moved 80 feet from the tracks. (Dublin Progress, May 5, 1893) Men appear to have been riding on top of the box cars. Women were riding inside the cars. Some of the women were bare headed. That wouldn’t have been fashionable at that time, leading us to question if this might have been an emergency evacuation facilitated by the railroad. Because of the tremendous destruction by the tornado, they may have been coming to
Mill can be seen in the background.