On August 27, 1883, residents of Stephenville reported sounds resembling cannon fire. The stage driver from Cisco said that people all over Eastland County were talking about how strange it was to hear thunder on a clear day. The noise was the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa exploding with the force of many hydrogen bombs. The violent eruption sent dust and gasses into the stratosphere where it circled the globe, cooling the earth that winter. In January of 1884, the Stephenville Empire reported that Erath creeks were frozen several inches and oats were killed in the field. As powerful as it was Krakatoa was ten times less than the history-changing Tambora eruption of 1815, known in the Northeastern states as “The Year without a Summer.”

Fort Worth Gazette; John T. Carr. Texas Droughts: Causes, Classifications and Prediction. No. 30. Austin: Texas Water Development Board, November, 1966; Nathalie Schaller, et. al. “Climate Effects of the 1883 Krakatoa Eruption: Historical and Present Perspectives, Vierteljahrsschrift der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zurich (2009) 154(1/2): 31-40.