1891 Train Wreck At Porcupine Canyon

The 1891 Train Wreck at Porcupine Canyon was a railroad disaster which occurred on the afternoon of October 3, 1891, killing as many as 436, making it the most deadly rail disaster in Western history. A locomotive passenger train, traveling from Fort Collins, Colorado to Sacramento, California, was intercepted by bandit members of the Cowboy Dan Posse at the narrow pass of Porcupine Canyon in San Juan County, Utah. During the ensuing raid, the train derailed, plummeting over 1,000 feet into the Colorado River below and killing all those aboard.

## Background

During the 1890s, often called the "Golden Age of Rail", most of the United States depended on rail transport to connect the east and west coasts. Trains were used not only to transport passengers, but goods, money, and mail would be transported on the same rails.

During the first week of every other month, the First National Bank of Sacramento would send a shipment of silver ore, mined from the hills surrounding the town, to the United States Federal Reserve in Denver, Colorado. The Federal Reserve would then send a fresh batch of bank notes, usually silver certificates, back to the bank. This train was usually well-guarded.

Following the ten-year anniversary of the assassination of US President James Garfield, a threat to national security led to the October 1891 Sacramento Silver Train being left largely unguarded. Thanks to an informant, Daniel Kendall "Cowboy Dan" Baumgartner caught wind of this opportunity and decided to intercept the train en route to Sacramento. Studying the train's route, Porcupine Canyon was chosen as an ideal intercept location, as it was unlikely that the train would be rerouted before this point, it was rural enough to keep the law away, and the canyon provided a sort of natural cover.

## Setup

On October 1, 1891, the Cowboy Dan Posse committed a stagecoach robbery near Salt Lake City, Utah. They made off with weapons, food, and money, stealing an estimated $4,000 total value.

Two days later, on October 3, the gang set up camp at Porcupine Canyon. The gang loaded explosives, primarily dynamite, into the corpse of a dead burro which they left on the tracks. The plan was that the scouts traveling in front of the train would find the loaded burro and signal the train to stop in the canyon. The explosives would then be detonated, both decommissioning as many of the bank's guards as possible and rendering the track ahead of the train unusable. With the train stuck, the passengers and payload could be successfully robbed without any significant risk to the gang. The expected take for the heist was an estimated $500,000 total (some $13,675,000 in modern value), $100,000 of which was supposed to be in silver bullion.

## Heist and Disaster

At approximately 3 in the afternoon, the train reached Porcupine Canyon, right on schedule. However, the bank's scouts either did not spot the dead burro on the tracks or did not think it posed a significant threat, assuming that the train would simply run over it or push it off. The train barely slowed down as it hit the burro, pushing it to the side. Baumgartner instructed his men to let the train pass, planning on catching the next one instead in two months, but Lenford Kemp, the demolition specialist in the gang, detonated the explosives against Baumgartner's will.

The blast from the dynamite was sufficient to not only mangle the track, but puncture the hull of the locomotive's steam engine, resulting in an even larger blast than expected. The locomotive was almost completely destroyed in the blast, and its remnants teetered over the precipice delicately. Making the best of a bad situation, Baumgartner instructed his men to board the train and begin simultaneously evacuating passengers and taking the valuables.

Shortly after the train was boarded by Baumgartner and his men, a fire spread from the train's coal car to Passenger Car #1, which contained the reserves for the train's natural gas lighting. A second explosion soon rocked the train, sending cars #1, #2, #3, and #4 plummeting into the canyon. The hitch connecting cars #4 and #5 was severed, but car #5 now dangled dangerously over the edge.

With the train partially evacuated, Baumgartner's gang began raiding the cargo cars, throwing mail, packages, luggage, and crates off the train. However, around this time a fire broke out again, this time in car #7. The fire from car #7 ignited a cloud of natural gas in the air, left from the severed gas line between car #4 and #5, and cars #5 and #6 were immediately engulfed in flame. It is believed that Baumgartner was still on car #6. Car #7 soon followed.

The survivors were captured by Baumgartner's posse, who bound them and sat them at the foot of a rocky outcrop a few yards from the track and the burning train. While much of the train was at one point engulfed in flames, the fire died quickly down as it soon began raining. However, the torrential downpour proved fatal, as the rocky outcrop the group sat at the foot of soon became loose and triggered an avalanche, causing a section of the canyon's face some 2,000 feet long to collapse and plummet into the river below. The train, luggage, money, survivors, tracks, and Cowboy Dan Posse were all swept into the river and destroyed.

## Mystery

When the train failed to reach Sacramento on time, an alert was sent by telegraph to every law enforcement agency and sheriff's department along the train's planned route. A manhunt began, with over 2,000 volunteers involved. Newspapers began publishing theories on the disappearing train, from treason to terrorism to indian attack. Some even suggested that God had plucked the train off the earth and into the heavens.

## Discovery of wreckage

On October 8, 1891, a second train attempted to cross Porcupine Canyon. They discovered the track washed out, and eventually even spotted the remains of the train hundreds of feet below along the riverbanks. A few bodies were found nearby, where survivors had managed to crawl hundreds of yards in some cases away from the train before the mudslide, but no survivors were recovered alive and intact. No expedition would be made down to the wreckage for nearly a decade.

On August 20, 1901, Lenford Kemp returned to the train wreck location to retrieve any treasure he could and discover whether or not Baumgartner had actually died. He was accompanied by his "Kemp Gang", Lyle Steinberg, Mark Hewitt, Dan Jones, Marge Barber, Eugene Granger, Al Tucker, Dexter Martin, Luther DuPond, and Poldi Gorgoni. A day later, they would be joined by the First Playthrough Party. Much of the silver was recovered at this point and split up among the two parties, and a mass grave was created by the dead. Due to a freak blizzard in the previous couple of days and swelling on the river around the wreck, much of the wreck may have been covered in silt in the following weeks, making the discovery and extraction a truly last-minute excursion.

## Death toll

As many of those dead were members of the poorly documented Cowboy Dan Posse, it is hard to get an exact death toll for the event. However, 314 passengers held tickets for the train, plus an additional 8 engineers, 28 conductors, and 16 security guards. If all of these may be assumed dead, the non-criminal death toll would be placed at 366. At the time, the Cowboy Dan Posse was estimated to consist of some 70 members, all of which may have been involved in or killed in the attack. Therefore, as many as 436 people may have lost their lives in the 1891 Train Wreck, making it, at the time, the most deadly railroad accident in United States history (though the Great Chatsworth Train Wreck four years earlier in Chatsworth, Illinois suffered greater casualties at 457, only 85 of those were actually deaths with the rest being injuries).