1918: Déjà Flu
Camp Bowie, Fort Worth, Texas 1918 - Photo From the Fort Worth Historical Personal Collection
2020 was unlike any other year in our lifetime. We are amidst a global pandemic and our lives are significantly altered. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic that began three months into the year, Fort Worthians are quarantined in their homes (for the most part) and have suffered through mass cancellations of weddings, travel and vacation plans. Citizens forfeited concert tickets and rearranged holiday plans with loved ones. They are required to cover, albeit fashionably, their nose and faces with masks. Lives and businesses came to a screeching halt.
But 2020 had a precedent. In 1918, delighted about the future, the world was caught off-guard and stricken by the influenza pandemic known as the ‘Spanish Flu’. At the time, Fort Worth newspapers reported drastic measures that are eerily similar to what the city is doing today to fight COVID-19.
In 1918, The Spanish Flu became the worst pandemic in recorded history. The airborne virus ravaged the globe and left no continent unaffected resulting in 50 million deaths worldwide and 500,000 of those were Americans. Today, the U.S. reports over 300,000 COVID-19 deaths as of mid-December 2020.
Fort Worth was in its next great impetus. The population had just crossed the 100,000 mark, streetcars scooted around the now bumpy brick roads, the Stockyards was the largest horse and mule market in the world, and crime was at an all-time low thanks to the dismantling of Hell’s Half Acre.
But in 1918, the virus made its way to Fort Worth and forced its citizens to adapt to a new way life, with the closure of schools, theaters, and various businesses. Temporary medical facilities were set up for the growing number of sick individuals. Woefully, Fort Worth did not expect COVID-19 to overtake the city in the same fashion in 2020.
The 1918 pandemic coincided with World War I and it was believed that the virus first emerged from Spain, but it is actually unclear where the deadly Influenza strain originated. Spain was not involved in the war, but during the pandemic’s peak, the Spanish King Alfonso XIII contracted the virus. It was the press of the nations involved in the war that freely reported about the flu and perpetuated the misnomer “Spanish Influenza” or the “Spanish Grippe.” So, the name stuck.
Recent epidemiologists traced the outbreak of the flu in the United States to a physician’s office in Kansas. They pinpointed the initial progression of the virus between civilian and military populations. Per the first reports of the Spanish Flu in the United Sates, a U.S. Army soldier visited his family in Kansas during the holidays of 1917-1918 when he contracted the virus. The soldier went on to carry the flu to Camp Funston, now known as Fort Riley, Kansas, and infected his fellow troops.
As the war intensified, infected troops were sent overseas and spread the virus among military bases and to the front lines in Europe. By March, soldiers started arriving at infirmaries in large numbers. The virus quickly made its way to soldiers in close-knit camps, and eventually to their home countries as they returned from service.
This severity of the outbreak faded over the warm spring and summer months, but when the second wave of the Spanish Flu emerged in August 1918, all hell broke loose.
That September, the Spanish Flu arrived in Texas at the U.S. Army base Camp Logan outside of Houston. Within a few weeks, the virus reached Fort Worth at its own army training base - Camp Bowie.
Camp Bowie was established by the U.S. War Department to train the 36th Infantry in 1917. For reference, the Camp was about three miles west of downtown, now known as the Arlington Heights neighborhood. Think Camp Bowie Boulevard, but with open artillery fields, army tents, a base hospital -no Kincaid’s or Showdown Saloon.
The virus proliferated in the Camp, and 81 cases were reported by late September. Due to the lackadaisical attention noted by other cities and military camps, Fort Worth implemented preventative tactics in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus in the Camp, as well as other areas of Fort Worth.
One 1918 Fort Worth Record headline read, “Fort Worth Dates for Grand Opera Have Been Canceled.” Another headline from the Star-Telegram read, “Quarantine is Placed on T.C.U. By Influenza.” Fast forward to 2020: “Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra Cancels Remaining Bass Season.”, and “Stock Show and Rodeo Cancellation Will Cost Fort Worth $110 Million.”
By October, the city and army officials were working closely together to quarantine the troops at Camp Bowie.
Soldiers were ordered to sleep 5 feet apart to prevent infection and were barred from going to “picture shows,” dancehalls, and pool rooms. The City of Fort Worth closed nearly all gathering places, including churches, schools, and theaters. The virus became too difficult to contain and Camp Bowie was among the hardest hit with more than 1900 soldiers infected; with some treated in makeshift tents.
The Spanish Flu advanced throughout Fort Worth and hospitalizations surged. One Fort Worth Star Telegram headline read, “Hospital Toll Reaches 1908.” That October, 1200 had died.
El Paso reported 131 deaths in one week. Camp MacArthur, near Waco had more than 900 cases. Nearly 500 civilians and over 200 soldiers died there. San Antonio reported more than 12,300 cases with nearly 900 deaths. Estimates put the death toll at more than 20,000 in Texas, including 1800 troops (although it is likely that tens of thousands of cases went unreported).
By late October, the virus seemed to have retreated quickly. The daily death toll went back to zero, and schools reopened. The Star-Telegram reported: “It is agreed that the influenza has about run its course.”
It was not until 1945 that the first flu vaccine was approved for use in the United States.
The parallels between the Spanish Flu of 1918 and COVID-19 are strikingly apparent.
We are once again faced with a generation-defining crisis. With the new vaccine rollout, Fort Worth is hopeful about the new year.
This is certainly not the last pandemic. Be smart, be safe, be cognizant of the crises that came before us, Fort Worth survived one pandemic and can do it again.
WRITTEN BY MICHAEL GOVEA OF FORT WORTH HISTORICAL, JANUARY 2021