Please support this 70-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to The magazine was forced to suspend print publication in 2013, but a group of volunteers saved the archives and relaunched it in digital form in 2017. Give me some more of that,” said the engineer, who, revived, called for a bucket of water to dip his hands in. The picture was taken at an Anderson and Golfe studio in Sandstone.
He whistled twice as a signal to Best, and stopped. The next morning another train started out from Pine City. The people had refused to heed the warning of the refugees from Hinckley, on board the emergency train, which pulled out and left them to their fate. Many corpses were found in a running position, having fallen in midstride. When he came to, the train was crawling up a slight grade with a scant ninety-five pounds of pressure showing on the gauge. As Barry approached it, he saw that it was afire from one bank to the other. Best, at the front of the train, controlled the air brakes, which was fortunate, since Barry didn’t want to wait. The heat was terrific, and Ford was three times driven from the spout; but he knew that if the engine ran out of steam, crew and passengers would most likely die. The inhabitants, however, had become fearless bf danger. The little boy was saying, “Have we got to die papa, have we got to die?”Daugherty had just succeeded in convincing his son that everything was fine, when “a great big fellow, evidently a religious fanatic, with eyes bulging out of his head went through the car shouting, ‘We are all going to heaven together.’”The cars were burning and the window glass melting. A Treasury of Railroad Folklore. After more than two hundred pages of the most harrowing descriptions of the catastrophe, Brown concludes with the ingenuous note: “For particulars regarding lands and other data of interest to a person contemplating removal to the Northwest, application can be made to Mr. Wm. The saws started up, and the ten-hour workday began.Toward noon a stiff breeze blew up. After the war he drifted west to visit an uncle in Minnesota, took a liking to the vicinity, and became an engineer on the St. Paul & Duluth.Still, the run started out somewhat differently from most.
He was no more than two thousand feet clear of it when the east end collapsed into the river.Damuth, dazed, wandered toward the bridge and was killed. The loss by the fires at Hinckley was one hundred and ninety-seven persons.A half an hour after the emergency train had left Sandstone, which is situated on the Kettle River, in Pine County, about nine miles from Hinckley, the conflagration reached the village. Not much is known about John Blair prior to this historic day. “My God!
By this time the whole village was on fire, and the people proceeded to a potato patch in the rear of the store. According to Best’s fireman, Barry’s conductor then came running over and shouted, “Barry will cut off his engine and pull out!”It did, in fact, seem time to leave. The fire would seem to burn the sides right off the buildings, revealing the contents in the glare. The depots served two railroads whose tracks crossed just south of the town: the St. Paul & Duluth, and the Eastern Minnesota, which ran between Duluth and Minneapolis. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and remained under institutional psychiatric care until September 10, 2016. Such was the case inSomewhat common were small fires set off from the sparks of passing locomotives and there was an abundance of locomotives in the late 1800’s. For nearly a quarter of a century they had been clearing their farmlands by burning them over—a quick, easy, hazardous method. Root stopped the train, and collapsed on the floor of the cab. “I was constantly implored to go, but there was still time, and many lives to be saved by the waiting.”Up ahead, Barry’s whistle kept screaming to start, and frame buildings half a block away were detonating like bundles of fireworks. The wind was blowing a perfect hurricane, from a direction a little west of south. Then he heard a noise, and looked up to see another wagon, driverless, coming through the smoke. The train, after waiting for three quarters of an hour at the depot, and until men and animals were falling in the street from the heat, moved out towards a place of safety. Something of the spirit that helped rebuild it is evident in a small book about the disaster written a few months afterward by a man named Elton Brown. The fire that reached Mission Creek swept onwards towards the north, following the direction of the St. Paul and Duluth railway tracks, where they intersect with the Great Northern tracks. At last some thirty were dead on the tracks behind; the rest stumbled along as best they could. Public outcry over the verdict led to the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984, which altered the rules for consideration of mental illness of defendants in Federal Criminal Court proceedings in the United States. The population was growing, people were building houses and the jobs were plentiful. Some forty more refugees were pulled aboard. The survivors of the calamity, however, state that the wind was terrific and the smoke was so black and dense that it was impossible to see anything three feet away. Updates are below. The summer of 1894 was hot and dry. Men began to show up with wagons loaded with barrels of water.Chief Craig ran to the St. Paul & Duluth depot and had Thomas Dunn, the telegrapher there, wire nearby Rush City for more hose. The towels were being handed out from the lavatory in the chair car. Neighbors helped Jesmer keep his family above water. We covered this incident live. For two hours they laid with their faces to the ground until the worst was over, and that night were conveyed by a work train to Pine City.