1949 Operation Haylift

Karen Simon writes in the Sierra Sun:

Few Nevada winters have been as brutal as that of 1948-49, when towering snowdrifts and frigid cold waves shut down the state’s major highways and isolated many rural communities. Sixty years ago, the harsh elements nearly decimated Nevada’s livestock industry as cattle and sheep became helplessly snowbound. Weather conditions were so severe a small group of ranchers in hard-hit Eastern Nevada devised an unusual plan to reach their starving livestock that were cut off from grazing by deep snow. The ranchers and officials were inspired by the besieged citizens of West Berlin, who were receiving shipments of food and fuel airdropped by U.S. military planes in the Berlin Airlift. The Nevadans organized “Operation Haylift,” a massive relief effort using U.S. Air Force C-82 cargo airplanes, known as Flying Boxcars, to save the starving animals...