Highlight all this page, copy it, and paste it into an Apple Works document and print it out. An excellent story to read your class.

Girl with the unlighted lantern

In 1881 fifteen-year-old Kate Shelley saved the Chicago & North Western Railway's Chicago Express from certain doom when a bridge in Boone, Iowa, washed out. Read this story from True Adventures of Railroaders.

by David P. Morgan

She was an Iowa farm girl. She was only fifteen years old. But on the black, stormy night of July 6, 1881, she was the bravest girl in the world.

Kate Shelley was her name.

She lived on a little farm tucked away in the hills beside Honey Creek, just a stone's throw from the wooden trestle which carried the Chicago & North Western Railway across the stream. From the windows of their small cabin, the Shelleys could see the trains roll by. Often the freights would have a helper locomotive to boost them up out of the De Moines River Valley. Railroading was very much a part of the Shelleys' life. Michael J. Shelley, the head of the family, had been a track worker for the North Western.

Most farm girls work hard, but Kate did a man's job. She had to. When she was just twelve years old her father died. Because she was the oldest of the five children, Kate took his place in the home. She worked from before dawn until after dark. It was always hard, dirty work. She plowed the fields, hoed the corn, milked the cows, and fed slop to the pigs. And she helped her mother look after her younger brothers and sisters.

In 1881 there were no automobiles or television sets or radios. Kate Shelley wouldn't have had time to enjoy them if there had been. The family owed money on the farm, and it was all they could do just to keep going.

On July 6 ominous black clouds moved across the sky. By early evening lightning was arcing overhead and thunder shook the valley. The wind came up and with it the rain blew in &endash; not just a summer shower but a hard, steady downpour.

The Shelleys sat down to supper by candlelight at 6:30. Nobody talked much at the table. They were thinking about the farm &endash; and what the storm might do to it. Too much rain can beat down crops, drown livestock, and uproot fence posts. After supper the plates were washed and dried; then Kate's four younger brothers and sisters tumbled off to bed. As the storm grew worse, Kate put on an old coat, grabbed her father's railroad lantern, and went outside.

Honey Creek was up over its banks!

The girl walked swiftly toward the barn. She found that instead of muddy ground there was only water. She made it to the barn, threw open the door, and drove the horses and cows outside to freedom. Then she found some little pigs, vainly trying to escape the rising water by hiding in a stack of hay. She rescued them and returned to the house to dry out.

Kate and her mother did not go to bed early that night. They sat up in the flicking candlelight and watched the old clock tick off the minutes toward midnight.

Not long after eleven o'clock they heard an engine whistle over the roar of the storm. They looked at each other. There was no train on the North Western due at that hour. The next one would be the eastbound Chicago Express. But what Kate and her mother heard was no regular train. It was the helper locomotive from Moingona. Its crew had been ordered to run to Boone and back, checking the track along the way for washouts or trees fallen across the rails.

From the window Kate could see the engine's headlight throw a yellow beam through the wet blackness of the night. Ed Wood was running the slow-moving locomotive; George Olmstead was his fireman. Standing out in the rain on the footboard at the rear of the engine were Brakeman Adam Agar and Section Foreman Pat Donahue. The helper jobbed through the murk. It came onto the Honey Creek Bridge. From the cabin Kate Shelley watched it come.

Suddenly the trestle timbers crumpled under the weight of the engine. Its headlight veered up crazily. There was an awful crash of steel against wood as the engine plunged down into the floodwaters. For a scant second steam hissed as the firebox fell below water level.

Then there was silence.

"Mother!" screamed the girl. "They've gone down!"

By now the children were up and standing wide-eyed beside their mother and older sister. Mrs. Shelley tried to stop Kate, who was already putting on her coat. No one could help the men on the fallen engine. The rolling, churning waters were too strong, the wind too high. What could a fifteen-year-old girl do to help? But Kate knew someone must try to help the men. Someone must, also, flag the eastbound Express.

"Go then, in the name of God, and do what you can!" cried her mother.

Kate was gone, hurrying across the farmyard with her father's railroad lantern in her hand. Normally she could have reached the trestle by walking straight form the cabin, but that night the water surrounded her home on the three sides. The girl ran back to a hill behind the cabin, circled around to the railroad, then raced down the track to the Honey Creek Bridge. The trestle was still standing near the bank &endash; but beyond, the rails hung helplessly over the rushing waters. Below in the raging torrent she could just see the driving wheels of the overturned locomotive.

Over the scream of the wind and rain Kate called out. Straining her ears, she heard a man answer. Neither Kate nor Ed Wood and Adam Agar, the railroaders who were trying to save themselves from drowning, could make out what one another said. Kate knew that she could not help the men then. A bigger job lay ahead. Somehow she had to stop the Chicago Express. Wood and Agar could not help; it was all they could do to keep their heads above water. And in 1881 there were no automatic block signals on the North Western to warn an engineer that the track ahead had been washed out. There was only Kate Shelley, a fifteen-year-old farm girl, soaked to the skin and holding a railroad lantern. Off in the west the Express was roaring through the night with three hundred passengers in its coaches and sleeping cars. Kate dared not think of the train plunging off the bridge into swollen Honey Creek. She began to run toward Moingona.

Moingona was one mile away. But that night it was the longest, hardest, most dangerous mile in the world. Between Kate and the tiny depot at Moingona there stood the high 671-foot trestle across the De Moines River. The fast-moving floodwaters already lapped at the track across the top of the trestle. The wind was an unrelenting gale. A husky man would have hard work making the trip that night. Could a girl do it?

Kate tripped over a tie between the rails, dropping her lantern and cracking its glass. She scrambled to her feet, picked up the lantern, and ran on. She came to the end of the Des Moines River Bridge and fell down again. Her lantern went out. She grabbed it up again and started across the long trestle.

There were no handrails on the bridge, no platform. There were just the cross-ties, each spaced far apart, each as slippery as polished glass. One misstep, one slip, and the girl would be cast into the racing, raging waters below. Kate Shelly fell to her hands and knees, digging her fingernails into the rough, splintery wood. Now and then her coat or dress got caught in a spike, ripping the fabric. Her hands and knees were scratched and cut until they were bloody. Yet somehow she kept crawling ahead to Moingona station. Only she could save the Express!

Suddenly in the glare of a flash of lightning, Kate saw an uprooted tree floating rapidly toward the bridge. Frightened, exhausted, the girl watched the tree come straight toward the bridge like a battering ram. If it hit, the whole trestle might crumple. Certainly the shock would throw her off into the river. But the tree swished between the tall piers of the bridge and went on downstream. Kate gasped in relief and staggered on.

Beyond, at Moingona, the agent ducked outside into the driving rain, hung up a hoop of orders for the Express, and hurried back inside his dry station. Not long afterward, the door was thrown open and Kate Shelley almost fell inside. Her hair was wet and stringy, here clothes were torn, her hands and knees were bleeding. In one hand she grasped a broken, unlighted railroad lantern.

"Honey Creek Bridge is out!" she gasped. "Flag the Express."

The agent did not stop to ask the girl questions. Picking up his red lantern, he rushed out into the rain as an engine whistled in the distance away to the west. He swung his light across the rail in what railroaders call a washout or stop signal. The engineer of the Express saw the red light, closed his throttle, and applied the brakes. The Chicago-bound passenger train ground to a halt before the depot, its engine steaming impatiently in the pouring rain. The engineer climbed down, and the conductor came up from the coaches behind.

What was the meaning of flagging down the North Western's best train?

The agent told them of the broken bridge ahead and pointed to the girl at his side. Passengers came tumbling off the cars of the train to swarm around the young heroine. Someone in the crowd passed a hat to reward Kate; men and women dug into their pocketbooks and purses. Nothing was too good for the girl who had saved them all single-handed from drowning in Honey Creek.

But the long night was not over for Kate Shelly. She hurriedly told the railroad men about the overturned helper engine up the line. Somewhere along the banks of Honey Creek its crew was clinging for life. There was not a minute to waste. The engineer of the Express climbed on his engine and pulled on the whistle cord in a series of short, sharp blasts. The townspeople of Moingona awoke, dressed, and came to the station. Men brought rope. The passenger locomotive was uncoupled from the Express; willing hands helped Kate up into the cab, and the rescue party set off down the line.

They stopped at the edge of the demolished trestle, and Kate pointed out the spot where she had heard voices. In the lantern light a rope was thrown to Ed Wood. Hand over hand, the engineer pulled himself out of the water. Agar was father downstream. It was impossible to get near him in the darkness. He was finally rescued next morning.

Kate was taken home and put to bed. While she slept, her story was dispatched to the nation, tapped out over the telegraph wires to a thousand newspaper editors. Next day excited Americans thrilled to the story &endash; the true story &endash; of how a fifteen-year-old farm girl had crawled on hands and knees to save the lives of three hundred passengers aboard the Chicago Express.

When Kate awoke, she was the darling of the country. Bags of mail came to Moingona, letters from people who had read of her courageous act. Newspaper reporters rode to Moingona to hear her story; theater managers offered her big money to appear on the stage; feature stories and poems about her were published everywhere. The Chicago & North Western Railway presented her with a gold medal. And because it realized that a poor farm family could not buy much with a gold medal, the grateful railway gave Kate a hundred dollars, a half-barrel of flour, some coal, and a lifetime pass over its lines. The State of Iowa gave her another medal and two hundred dollars. A monument was erected in her honor, and her story was placed in schoolbooks. Special funds were started to pay off the debt on the Shelley farm and give Kate a college scholarship.

But the awful run to Moingona, to save the Express and the news that two of her friends on the fallen helper engine had drowned, proved too much for Kate. The girl fell ill and was confined to bed for three months. When she was well again, she was persuaded to give lectures about her dash across the trestle and to go to college.

Kate never forgot about her home and family on Honey Creek. When, in 1903, the North Western needed an agent for the small depot at Moingona, Kate applied for the job and got it. She worked there each day until she died in January 21, 1912. It had been more than thirty years since her act of courage, but the North Western had not forgotten. It ran a special funeral train for her.

Today a strong steel bridge carries the long freights and yellow streamliners across the Des Moines River. Most railroad bridges are simply numbered but this one has a name. It's called the Kate Shelley Bridge.