May 20th, 1957, 62 years ago, a tornado descended from the sky, touching down at 6:12 that evening near Williamsburg, from there, it made its deadly way toward Ottawa.
Though it didn’t exist at the time, the tornado’s path would roughly follow that of modern-day interstate 35. The first major structure the tornado would destroy was Susan Geiss’s family’s U-Rest Motel, then Bob’s Truck Stop, then the Hillcrest drive-in theatre. Many residents recall the tornado had three vortexes as it came through before combining into one large one.
It would miss Ottawa, passing just south of city-proper, and take a northeastern route, and continue on the ground all the way to Kansas City. Very unusual for a tornado to be on the ground for so long. Once in Kansas City, the destruction and death began in earnest. Dubbed the Ruskin Heights tornado, after killing two in Franklin County, 37 people died as the storm churned through Ruskin Heights neighborhood. In a weird twist, the tornado destroyed the school there, the front wall, all that remained standing and oddly enough tore the letters off the building except the letters R, U, I, and N… RUIN.
