Wichita Falls Tornado Disaster Photo Archive Documenting Residential Destruction After the Deadliest Texas Tornado of 1979

Texas Tornado

Photograph

Wichita Falls tornado photographs documenting residential destruction after the April 10, 1979 storm, in one of the worst weather disasters in Texas history. An unidentified photographer recorded the city after the storm passed, focusing on leveled subdivisions, broken walls, stripped trees, scattered lumber, and improvised messages left amid the wreckage. The Wichita Falls tornado killed 42 people, injured about 1,700, left thousands homeless, and became one of the defining U.S. tornado disasters of the late twentieth century. It was part of the Red River Valley outbreak and remained one of the costliest single tornado in American history.

Photo archive of 10 large silver gelatin photographs, each 8" x 10" inches, Wichita Falls, Texas, April 1979. The photographs show heavily damaged residential blocks with roofs removed, exterior walls torn open, and entire houses reduced to low fields of debris. Several views follow curving suburban streets bordered by foundations, chimney remnants, snapped trunks, and open lots where structures had stood. One image shows a surviving two story stone faced house with damaged trees and parked cars in front, while another centers on a handwritten sign in the debris field reading “We Need Another Piece of the Rock,” turning the disaster scene into a direct record of local response and shock. Other photographs widen out to nearly treeless stretches of cleared ground, with only scattered framing, brush piles, and fragments of neighborhood infrastructure left in place. Across the group, the repeated vantage from roads and driveways keeps the focus on domestic space after destruction rather than on the tornado cloud itself.

The tornado first touched down northeast of Holliday and crossed Wichita Falls as a huge F4, at times about one and a half miles wide, destroying thousands of homes and apartment units and causing roughly $400 million in damage in 1979 dollars. Weather officials later stressed that warning systems and media coverage saved many lives, since residents had some notice before the storm entered the city. Light wear; prints remain clean and strong overall. Overall very good condition.

Item #23308

Price: $550.00