In this ongoing series, we feature a piece from our Museum Director, Billie DeLancey, originally published in The Johnstown Breeze on June 26, 2025. Enjoy this look back, and keep an eye on the paper for the newest stories shaping our community.
On the morning of June 29, 1928, Susie McLaughlin and three lunch guests were about to sit down at the table when they looked out the window and realized they were in the bullseye of a wicked tornado headed straight for the farmhouse.
One of the guests said, ‘Get in the closet, now’. No more than five minutes had passed when they opened the door, stepped out, and began to process what they had just survived – Susie was distraught.
The tornado originated near Mead and had traversed northeasterly, ravishing at least nine farms in a 10-square-mile swath of prime farmland, destroying crops, farm equipment, and structures. Susie’s property, located about a mile south on CR 17 north of what is now the Pioneer Ridge subdivision, took the brunt of it all when the twister became stalled in the Little Thompson River that meandered through her farm.
There, stuck in the river from its added weight from the water, it churned, sucking everything near it into its core, then spitting the mangled and broken pieces of Susie’s home and belongings back out.
The tornado took the life of Susie’s beet worker Adeline Montez, who was sheltered in a small beet shack on the farm. The tornado had picked up the shack and tossed it into the river where Adeline’s body was found after the storm.
Susie’s guests were unharmed, but Susie would also lose her life later that day from a ruptured kidney, spleen, and four fractured ribs sustained when a fence post had penetrated the closet wall and struck her in the back where she had been crouched.
No physical reminders of the tornado’s fury remain today. The worst destruction occurred along both sides of CR 17 at what is now the Pioneer Ridge subdivision and to the south side of the intersection of CR 17 and 42. There’s more to the story on exhibit at the Parish House. Come and learn more about it and more about Johnstown’s unique history.
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Sources: A Tribute To Johnstown, Rebecca S. Healy, 1977 and stories from the Johnstown Breeze.