A Freight Train Runs Into a Bluff of Rock—and Into the Yakima
An eastbound Northern Pacific freight hits a rockfall ten miles north of Ellensburg, throwing the engine and five cars into the river and leaving a first-run fireman missing.
ELLENSBURG, Feb. 20.—Special.—As freight train No. 58, east-bound, was rounding a curve ten miles north of here last night about 9 o'clock, it ran into a mass of rock from a bluff above. Engineer Hendricks jumped and told Fireman Fitzmorris to do likewise. Hendricks struck on his head on the rocks and was knocked senseless. The fireman has not yet been found and is supposed to be under the engine in the Yakima River. A brakeman also jumped and broke his leg at the ankle. Five freight cars and the locomotive were thrown into the river, and a number of other cars were badly damaged. Fitzmorris had been firing in the Tacoma yards. This was his first run to Ellensburg. He is said to be a nephew of Master Mechanic Warner.
“The fireman has not yet been found and is supposed to be under the engine in the Yakima River.”
Railroading in the 1890s was still brutally manual: a rockfall, a jump, and a missing fireman could turn a routine freight run into a disaster. The story is a reminder that the workers who moved the region's freight bore the risk long before modern safety rules and automated signals.
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