While Illinois is not as well known for tornadoes as Texas, Oklahoma, or Kansas, it tops all other Midwestern states for the annual number of twisters a year. So, it’s no surprise that at least 7 different high schools in the state have a tornado or storm as their team name.
What will probably comes as a surprise is there are more high schools in Illinois that have physically been hit by a tornado, than those with teams named after them.
The 1925 Tri-State Tornado, Murphysboro High
March marks the 100th anniversary of one of the nations deadliest tornadoes ever, the Tri-State Tornado, which gouged a path across Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana on March 18th, 1925. The death toll was 695. With another 2,000 injured from the storm.
The town of Gorham, Illinois was hit so hard, 60 of the 80 homes there were destroyed. All sustained damage. Every store in town and the train depot were also destroyed and the death toll hit 34 as the storm moved east to Murphysboro.
Murphysboro, Illinois may have taken the worst hit from the storm. Hit sometime between 2:30 and 3 pm, while school was still in session. Three schools were carved up in the winds. Survivers from Longfellow grade school talk about the walls crashing in on them and the floor caving in so they all fell to the level below Seventeen students lost their lives, three from Murphysboro High School. Had the storm come after school was out, who knows how many more may have died without the protection from the brick-school buildings.
Murphysboro lost 234 people due to the storm. The single highest loss of life in one town from a tornado in American history.
While not a high school, the grade school in De Soto took a direct hit from the tornado, resulting in the death of 33 students, also a record for a tornado. When the clouds cleared the storms path stretched 219 miles over three states.
Crystal Lake Central High School, Palm Sunday Tornado, 1965
Mementoes and trophies, like the ones pictured below, in a display case at Crystal Lake Central High School might ave been lost to time had an April 11, 1965 tornado moved just a few hundred feet north.
What became known as the “Palm Sunday Tornado” in Crystal Lake went through the sports fields behind the school as it made its way northeast across the town.
Thankfully for fans of great gyms Central’s field house was spared and is one of the 126 gyms featured in the book.
You can read more about the Palm Sunday Tornado that hit Crystal Lake on this page from the Crystal Lake Historical Society.
Belvidere & Oak Lawn High Schools, 1967
On April 21, 1967 a tornado struck Belvidere, a town just east of Rockford around 3:45 pm. Before the day was over the storm would blowout over Chicago into Lake Michigan, but not before hitting two high schools.
Belvidere High School was the first to be hit. The disastrous scene played out as the school day was ending and students were getting loaded onto buses. Thirteen people were killed at the school before the storm moved southeast.
A second tornado hit Lake Zurich and some neighboring towns. Doing some serious damage, but only 1 death was reported. The worst was yet to come.
It what is often referred to as the last real tornado to hit the city of Chicago, the village of Oak Lawn got the worst of it. The third tornado of the day was a direct hit on the town and Oak Lawn Community High School. Wiping out part of the gym. Luckily no students at the school were killed, through some were injured. Thirty three people did lose their lives however when the tornado touched down and cut across, palos Hills, Oak Lawn, Evergreen Park, and parts of Chicago’s south side.
The Oak Lawn Library has a collection of images from the aftermath of that storm here.
Bismarck Township High, April 3, 1974
Spread out over two days, a super outbreak of tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service, happened on April 3rd & 4th of 1974. Bismarck High School was struck during the April 3rd part of the storms.
Plainfield High School 1990
On August 28, 1990 a massive F5 tornado ripped through Plainfield, Crest Hill, and Joliet, with winds as high as 260 mph. At its peak over Plainfield it was said to have been a mile wide and the center of it passed directly over Plainfield High School (Plainfield Central now.) My soon-to-be stepdad’s house was directly behind the high school and was in the middle of the path of destruction. Two months later and this would have been my home and I probably would have been pulling into the driveway with my sister after coming home from school myself.
Thankfully the first day of classes were set for August 29th, so when the tornado hit the school around 3:30pm, there were just a small number of students there for football practice and a few teachers. A teacher and two maintenance workers were the only casualties at the school. However, a total of 29 people died due to the tornado, including two of my fellow students from Joliet Catholic Academy who happened to have been in the path of the tornado: Ryan Glazer and Tom Egizio. Ryan was the first new friend I made freshman year and Tom was a year younger than me and was a friend and classmate of my sister.
Without a school and without homes in some cases, students from Plainfield High had the good fortune of not being spilt up all over the area. Joliet Catholic Academy was in its first year of existence, as the all-boys Joliet Catholic High School merged, and moved in, with all-girls St. Francis Academy in Joliet. The seats at the old Joliet Catholic High building were practically still warm after having held the last classes there in June of 1990.
While the school maybe held 800 kids, Plainfield’s enrollment was at least double that, so I heard there were split days for under and upper classmen. The gym at old Joliet Catholic, which is featured in the book, managed to get a few more seasons in, as Plainfield was there for two and a half years before moving into a brand new Plainfield High.
Ironically I knew of at least one person who was a Joliet Catholic student before the 1990-91 school year, who transferred to Plainfield before the start of the school year, only to end up right back in the Joliet Catholic building for all but the final-5 months of his high school years.
Gillespie High School. May 31st, 2013
One of two gyms featured in the book Illustrious, Gillespie’s gym, “The Pit,” took a glancing blow from a EF-2 tornado. Thankfully one of Illinois’ oldest high school gyms was spared from any major damage. A partial collapse of the north wall, where the main entrance was, along with some of the roof, meant the majority of The Pit was in good shape.
The gym now has an updated entrance area and the look and feel of the part of the gym that was damaged has been restored to match. Although, finding lumber to match a then almost 90-year-old building isn’t easy. So, if you look closely you can see where old meets new.
Brookport High School, Nov. 17th, 2013
A rare November tornado ripped through Brookport, Illinois which sits on the Ohio River across from Paducah, Kentucy, which was also hit.
You can be forgiven if you haven’t heard of Brookport High. Not only has it not been a school since 1981, the town’s students now go to Massac County High. The actual building for the school has been gone since 2002, but while the gym was spared from the wrecking ball, the EF-3 tornado that hit the area in 2013 tried to change that.
The gym is the second of two gyms in the book to have been hit by a tornado, but that’s only half of the story. The gym is an amazingly little gem that will give you all the feelings you had when you first watched the movie “Hoosiers.”
Coal City High School, June 22nd, 2015
Coal City took the brunt of the damage from a storm that hopped around from Dixon to Kankakee in June of 2015. The high school building itself just missed any serious damage, but the baseball field and football were hit. Wiping out the football scoreboard and baseball press box. This video from CBS 2 Chicago shows the scoreboard which looks like a bomb was set off inside of it.
This was Coal City’s second tornado in two years.
Grayslake Central High School, Aug. 2nd, 2015
The Grayslake tornado of 2015 was probably the best possible outcome for the town and school. At least if you have to get hit by a tornado.
There were lots of downed trees, some damage, but no deaths. School started on time just shy of two weeks later.
Lewistown High School, April 4th, 2023
Less than two months after I visited Lewistown Junior/Senior High School, a tornado touched down about as close as it could without hitting the school.
Thankfully their gym was unscathed, as it’s on the best of list for many and also an entry in the Illustrious book. If it had been, the photos in the photos I took would have been some of the last taken there, but I’m going to let you in on a secret. I know where an absolute identical gym is at in the state of Illinois, and it too is in the book.
The link below has a video from a local FOX TV station that shows just how close the tornado came to the school and what damage was done to the football field.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq9hDEpB2IQ
Did I miss a high school on this list?
Do you know of any other Illinois high schools that were hit by a tornado? Let me know. Go to the contact page and tell me what you know and I’ll see if it should be included here.
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