The New Richmond tornado of June 12, 1899 struck the small Wisconsin town during a traveling circus performance, catching an unusually large crowd in the open. It killed 117 people and remains the deadliest tornado in Wisconsin history. The event ranks 9th on the list of deadliest US tornadoes.
On the evening of Monday, June 12, 1899, the Gollmar Brothers Circus was performing in the town of New Richmond, Wisconsin (population approximately 1,800). Roughly 1,000 additional visitors had traveled to town for the show. As the circus performance ended around 6:00 PM, a violent tornado approached from the southwest.
The tornado struck New Richmond at approximately 6:20 PM CDT, moving through the center of town. Its path took it directly across the crowded downtown area where circusgoers were preparing to leave.
Several factors combined to produce catastrophic casualties:
The tragedy became famous partly because of the circus context. Traveling shows in the 1800s drew crowds far exceeding local town populations. The Gollmar Brothers Circus alone tripled New Richmond's population that day. When the tornado struck, the town was full of people unfamiliar with the area, without local shelter options.
Circus performers themselves were killed, along with several exotic animals. The event marked one of the earliest documented examples of severe weather disrupting American traveling entertainment.
The tornado touched down west of New Richmond and moved northeast for approximately 45 miles across St. Croix and Polk counties. Peak damage in downtown New Richmond was consistent with F5 intensity in retrospective analysis - homes swept from foundations, brick buildings destroyed, and massive debris fields observed.
Because the F-scale wasn't introduced until 1971, this rating was applied retroactively by tornado researchers.
Roughly half of New Richmond was destroyed:
Rescue efforts began immediately. Telegraph messages spread word of the disaster throughout the Midwest. Trains from Minneapolis-St. Paul arrived with doctors, nurses, and supplies within hours.
Wisconsin's Governor Edward Scofield visited the town and organized state-level disaster response - unusually rapid intervention for the era. The event contributed to the eventual development of formal state disaster response systems.
New Richmond rebuilt in the years after. The town's population recovered by the early 1900s. Today, a memorial in New Richmond honors the victims of the tornado.
The event is preserved in Wisconsin history books and is periodically commemorated on major anniversaries. In tornado meteorology, it's cited as one of the earliest well-documented examples of an F5-caliber event in the upper Midwest - a region typically thought of as less tornado-prone than the Great Plains or Deep South.
Wisconsin averages 23 tornadoes per year - far fewer than Kansas or Oklahoma. Violent tornadoes (EF4/EF5) are rare. The 1899 New Richmond event is one of very few F5-caliber tornadoes ever recorded in the state's history.
Other significant Wisconsin tornadoes: