The daily palladium. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1904-1905, 1904-08-09
A GREAT DISASTER
Wreck of Worlds Fair Fly
er II Colorado Was an
Awful Thing.
NEARLY 100 VICTIMS
When the Denver g Rio Grande
Train Plunged Through the
Bridge There Was No Escape.
But Four Persons Out of the Crowd
ed Coaches Live to Tell
the Story.

Pueblo, Col, Aug. 9.-The wreck of
the Worlds Fair Flyer on the Denver
& Rio Grande near Eden, seven miles
north of Pueblo, Sunday evening,
proves to have been one of the great
est railroad disasters in the history of
the country. Two crowded passenger
cars and a baggage car were engulfed
In the torrent that tore out trestle
spanning Steeps hollow, otherwise
known as Dry creek, and, SO far as
known, only three of the occupants OF
these cars escaped death. Fortunate
ly two sleeping cars and diner, com.
pleting the train, remained on the
track at the edge of the abyss and
none of their occupants were killed OF
injured.
How many persisted probably will
treacherous sands are drifting over the
bodies. Searching for the dead is still
in progress. All corpses found were
brought to Pueblo and placed in four
have been recovered and of these fifty
have been identified. Bodies were re-
covered all the way along Fountain
river from the scene of the wreck to
this city. Two bodies were taken from
the stream at First street, Pueblo,
more than eight miles from the point
where the disaster occurred, and it is
probable that some may even be re-
covered even further down stream.
None of the bodies is badly mutilat-
ed, and all are in such condition as
to be recognizable. Many Identified
lions have been made by articles found
on the bodies, no persons who viewed
them recognizing the features. Added
to the seventy-six bodies thus far re-
covered there are more than twenty
five persons missing, this latter being
based upon estimates of the number of
persons who were seated in the fated
cars. The actual number may never
be known, as the body of the conduc-
tor, who had the tickets in his pocket,
has not !et been recovered.
So quie, IS had the catastrophe been
three cars remaining on the track did
not realize that an accident had oc-
Cured until they alighted from the
train. Then they were utterly power
less to render assistance to the vic
tins, who had disappeared into the
rushing waters. The bridge gave way
as if it had been stack of kindling
wood and the locomotive dropped with
the kissing of steam thirty feet to the
bottom of the arroyo, crOSSWise to the
track. The baggage car, smoking car
and chair car followed the locomotive
into the stream and were swept away
three men. persisted, and had not the
roof Of the chair car burst asunder,
none would have escaped. The fire.
man, as the locomotive went over, was
thrown out and, managing to grasp a
piece of wreckage from the bridge,
doated with that to q curve made by
thu caving bank and crept out of the
water. He ran toward Eden, meeting
on the way Operator F. NJ Jones and
his wife, who had already started up
the track. They had seen the head
light of the approaching train a minute
before and then had witnessed it dis
appear with ominous suddenness. The
two men ran to where the bridge had
been to search for victims of the dis
aster. When they reached the spot all
cries for help had ceased. Relief
trains with physicians, wreck and pile
driving outfits and scores of workmen
were hurried from the city. The first
train from the wreck came in shortly
after with ]. NJ. KILN of Pueblo, whose
escape was miraculous; H. S. Gilbert,
Tony Fisher and Fireman Mayfield.
They were four men in the midst of
the wreck who escaped. The water
tore a zig-zag course across the prai-
RE to depth of thirty feet in several
places. There was but little left of
the baggage cara few rods, a truck
or so, and a half buried iron safe. The
great locomotive, the boiler free of the
trucks, the cab and tank gone, lies
where it fell A quarter of a mile to
the east lay the chair car, windows
gone, three-fourths filled with mud and
sand. A hundred feet farther on was
the smoker. bottom up against a sand
bar. A hundred and nifty feet farther
on in the bed of the Fountain was the
coal-tender Of the engine, and from
that point on for four or five miles,
vestiges of the coaches, the engine and
tender stuck up from the bed of the
stream or lay along the shore or on the
islands. Bodies recovered were iden-
titled very slowly. because many of
them were those of strangers who had
been to the fair at ST. Louis, and other
Eastern points.