for twenty six days, and the snow fall amounted to over forty inches.

The blizzard of 1948-49 will be remembered as one of the most vicious ones most people has ever experienced. It began on Thursday morning, Nov. 18, 1948. After the snow stopped falling and the wind settled down, there were drifts as high as ten to fifteen feet high. Roads throughout the entire territory were blocked, telephone and power lines were knocked out and school closed. Farmers spent many anxious hours until they were able to dig out enough to provide feed for their stock. The people of the community were still greatly feeling the effects of the storm in November when in December, a second storm struck. High winds from forty to forty-five miles per hour whipping the snow into higher drifts and filling the cuts in the roads shut again. This was by no means the last store and throughout December and January, this storm was repeatered over and over again. On Febr. 3, 1949, the Fifth Army moved in with bulldozers and snow removal equipment.

Along with the blizzard the settlers had to put up with the depression and the drought. The grasshoppers that destroyed all the crops plus many severe hail storms that wiped out the crops.

The business places that were destroyed by fire in 1925, 1930, 1931 and 1967 makes one think there might be a better place to live. But then you have fine people around you to keep one another going. Like one person named Kelly Ryan. Kelly Ryan is widely known as a Blair industrialist, but in the town of Magnet they call him Santa Claus. It all came about the night of March 21, l966, when Kelly Ryan's "restaurant on wheels" (a converted 40-passenger bus) was led into Magnet by a gas truck during a blizzard and was stranded there for two nights and two days. With his mobile cafe he, supplied hot food for many of the Magnet residents. It was also equipped with a generator to supply power for cooking and cooling facilities plus lights.