Manchester, South Dakota - Ghost Towns on Waymarking.com

The town of Manchester took its name from the first postmaster who's name was Chester H. Manchester. The post office officially opened onJune 29, 1881. Manchester had numerous homes, a town hall, grocery stores, livery barns, a lumber yard, two grain elevators, a depot, a restaurant, a cream station, a bank, a pool hall, auto repair, blacksmith shops, gas stations, two churches, a system of township schools including Manchester High School, a hotel, a newspaper and a fabled town pump.

On June 24, 2003 a classic supercell thunderstorm spawned a tornado over eastern South Dakota. The tornado gradually matured and widened, forming a large "wedge" shape, and achieving an intensity of F4 on the Fujita Scale and a width of between one-half and one mile as it entered Manchester.

The mesocyclone associated with the tornado was tracked by a large number of meteorologists and storm chasers. A small probe was placed directly in the tornado's damage path. The vortex traveled directly over the instrument, and record-breaking meteorological data was obtained by the probe. It managed to survive winds in excess of 260 mph (418 km/h) and measured a barometric pressure fall of around 100 millibars near the center of the half-mile wide tornado.

Manchester was a small, compact town surrounded on all sides by farmland and built largely around the intersection of 427th St. and 47th Avenue in rural Kingsbury County. The tornado struck the intersection dead on, and was wide and powerful enough to destroy literally every building in the town. Miraculously, there were no deaths.

As of 2007, all that remains of Manchester is the numerous slab foundations of demolished houses surrounded by empty farmland, and the wind-twisted town limits sign, thus making Manchester a natural disaster ghost town. Although abandoned, Manchester remains on both the government rolls and the maps, pending the next Federal census.

On Jun 25th, 2007 a granite monument was erected in the ghost town commemorating its history and honoring the residents who had lived there.

Reason for Abandonment: Natural Disaster Date Abandoned: 06/23/2003 Related Web Page: Not listed

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