The dark storm clouds to the north worried engineer Charles Hindman as he piloted the Missouri Pacific/Rio Grande crack passenger train The World’s Fair Flyer on its south and eastbound run on the evening of August 7th, 1904. He could see the curtains of heavy rain draped beneath the angry looking thunderstorms. The train had in fact run through several heavy showers, and it had been difficult to keepup full steam in the downpours.
Hindman knew that the solid looking masses of heavy rain were falling on the nearly impenetrable hard, dry soils of southeastern Colorado. The sunbaked ground in this typically arid region could not absorb the torrential rains, so it typically flowed along the concrete-like ground until it found a dry wash or arroyo and gravity took over. Just one mile short of the station at the tiny town of Eden, Colorado, Hindman was approaching a trestle over one of those dry washes, and he wondered if it would be rushing with floodwaters.
Eden was about seven miles north of Pueblo, north of Colorado Springs. Train number 11 was running six minutes late, and Hindman wanted to make up some time, but he slowed as he approached the ninety six foot bridge over Dry Creek. Dry Creek was anything but dry on this fateful evening.
Hindman slowed the train to 15 mph as he cautiously approached the trestle. The gulch was also know as Steele’s Hollow. The bridge appeared to be in good condition as the locomotive with its tender and six cars trundled out onto the wooden structure. Hindman felt the bridge tremble. Fireman Frank Mayfield was holding a torch to look down as the condition of the tracks. Hindman could see the glitter of the light from the flames on the water. Water that was over the tracks.
Hindman instinctively knew that the bridge was going to give way, and he ordered the fireman to extinguish the torch, as it would be an ignition source if the train and its wooden cards were to crash. He also applied the brakes, bringing the train to a shuddering stop, and saving doznes of people in t he last three cars. But the huge wooden bridge shifted and began to collapse into the raging torrent. It would take the steam engine, tender, baggage car, and two packed passenger cars with it. Only three people would escape from this section of the train with the lives.
Because Hindman had the presence of mind to stop the train, the diner and two sleeping cars were left on the tracks, short of the abyss. A Pullman Car dangled menacingly, the front of the car three feet over the edge of the broken tracks.
The bridge normally was thirty feet above the sands of the dry creek. Not on this night, The locomotive and cars plunged into a tumultuous flood that was over thirty feet deep. Mayfield was thrown clear of the groaning locomotive as it sunk into the raging waters. He grabbed onto a timber from the destroyed trestle and floated down stream. He managed to get out of the water and clamber up the steep banks of the arroyo.
Less than a mile away, telegraph operator F.M. Jones had heard a terrific crash from his post at the Eden station. He had received word that train 11 had passed Pinon several minutes earlier, so he feared the worst. Jones immediately ran up the tracks to see what was the matter. He encountered the soaked fireman as he ran for help. Mayfield told Jones that the bridge had collapsed, taking the train with it. Jones immediately ran to wire for help.
Work and relief trains would be hastily organized in Pueblo, but it would be a few hours before they would arrive. Bewildered passengers alighed from the upright cars at the edge of the brink, unaware of what had happened. Many passengers were trapped in the rushing floodwaters and drowned.
Dawn revealed a mournful scene. Searchers scoured every inch of the creek bed, which had receded to a trickle by morning. The cars were half buried in sand, which had been transported by the floodwaters in the steep canton of the arroyo. Many of the victims were also buried. The deadly waters surged into Fountain Creek from the Dry Creek arroyo. Many bodies floated over eight miles downstream in Fountain Creek to First Street in Pueblo. When all was said and done, a total of 96 people perished
– Bill Murray
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