The Deadly Train Crash at Crush, Texas
In the late 19th century a railroad company was looking for a way to publicize their railroad line because a big, blaring, metal train on tracks apparently isn’t enough of an advertisement.
The company also had a bunch of old trains no longer in use so putting two and two together, they decided the best way to publicize their trains was to… crash them into each other!
“Should we be this close?”
The Need for Publicity
Entering the 1890’s the United States had unknowingly ended an age of economic growth that happened thanks in part to the rapid expansion of the railroad. Tracks were showing up in every city, state, and county. It was like Oprah with a studio audience and a shit ton of cars, everyone was getting one.
Someone could even go as far as to say, it was a bubble waiting to burst and in 1893 they would be proven right. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t feel great since the economic crisis that followed became known as the ‘Panic of 1893’. Go ahead, type in ‘Panic of’ into Google, and look at how many not so great-sounding years pop up.
The fuck happened in the year 29?
As far as railway companies go, there were a lot of shady business practices going on and two of the biggest companies went under in 1893. This caused massive unemployment and a stock market crash. But blaming the Panic of 1893 solely on railway companies is like me blaming my recent bit of weight gain on the pizza I had yesterday, there are a lot of other contributing factors.
As for the Panic of 1893, there was an overproduction of food with crops like corn and wheat making it cost more to grow than what it sold for. There was also the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 that passed because some people couldn’t give up silver like they were a five-year-old who just had candy for the first time. At one point in the 1890’s a silver $5 coin was technically worth half a gold $5 coin.
But getting into the details of all of that isn’t what’s important for our story, it simply sets the scene for a railway company that needed to advertise in a big way to win back public opinion in 1896.
Building Crush, Texas
In 1896 the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway company also known as the Katy (K-T) railroad because they apparently hated Missouri, was looking for a new publicity stunt to garner attention.
Katy Passenger Agent William Crush heard about a trainwreck stunt done earlier in May by the Columbus & Hocking Valley Railroad company in front of 20,000 spectators, and, most importantly, those 20,000 spectators were all paying customers, cha-ching! His bosses also saw the dollar signs and the planning started.
“We stopped listening after you said 20 thousand paying customers.”
Since the Katy was currently expanding throughout Texas, the company decided that would be the location to stage the crash, and they put William Crush in charge of the rest. Crush took a balls-to-the-wall approach and decided, that instead of asking a city or town to host the event, they would just build a temporary town 3 miles south of West, Texas. Of course, the new town would be named Crush.
The train crash wouldn’t be the only attraction at the site, there would be over 30 different stands of carnival games, food, drinks, medicine shows, and other side shows. Crush also had two water wells drilled at the site, set up two telegraph offices, and a makeshift prison… just in case. The whole thing was turning into a spectacle, it’s no wonder one of Crush’s good friends was P.T. Barnum.
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Entrance to the event would be free, the only thing people had to do was purchase a round-trip ticket on the Katy railroad to get there. At $2-$3.50 per ticket depending on where you were coming from, and 25,000 people projected to attend, the Katy line stood to make a minimum of $50,000 or $1.7 million in 2022 money.
With the plans made, Crush set the date of the crash for September 15th, 1896, the only thing left was to advertise it.
OH, and safety, like Crush I wasn’t really thinking about safety. The crowd would be pushed back about 200 yards from the crash with the press allowed to be 100 yards away.
Crush asked several engineers if there was anything they should be worried about and all but one said “Nah we’re good.” That one engineer warned about one of the train’s boilers possibly… maybe… exploding.
You read the title of the article, you know what’s about to happen.
The Crash at Crush
It’s estimated that 30,000 to 50,000 people arrived at Crush on September 15th, 1896. The crash had to be delayed by an hour to accommodate late arriving trains due to the demand. For a few hours on that one day, the town of Crush was the most populated town in the entire state. All were in attendance just to watch a train crash.
When the time came for the main event, two 35-short-ton decommissioned trains met on a 4-mile segment of tracks separate from the main line.
Yep, those are trains
The trains backed away from each other to their starting positions and at the signal, they took off. The crew aboard each train jumped out after a few seconds and watched as the trains barrelled down the tracks.
The crowd felt the approaching rumble as the trains reached 45 miles per hour. At the designated spot the trains smashed into each other amongst the cheering and clapping. Unlike the engineer’s warning, the boiler of one train didn’t explode… they both did.
“Should that shrapnel be coming at me like that?”
Iron and steel pieces of the trains flew into the sky hundreds of feet into the air and started coming down onto the spectators. Panic ensued and people ran away attempting to avoid the hot metal raining down on them.
A thousand feet away, 15-year-old Emma Frances Overstreet, was struck in the head and killed. Further away, on a tree, Ernest L. Darnell was stuck by a flying metal chain and died the following day. Six others were severely injured while many others suffered minor injuries. Jarvis Joe Deane, the man who took the picture above, lost an eye.
William Crush was fired from the Katy Railroad.
Aftermath
William Crush was rehired the very next day since the negative publicity wasn’t so damaging. In fact, the crash made the Katy an international sensation, and Crush enjoyed a long, almost 60-year career with them.
The Katy Railroad quickly settled a bunch of lawsuits, Jarvis Joe Deane got $10,000, around $350,000 in 2022 money, and a wicked cool eyepatch. Others received cash and a lifetime pass to the Katy Railroad which is like if someone beat the shit out of you and then, offered you a chance to be their best friend.
But, there were still two deaths, and Texas banned staged train wrecks in response. From that point forward, for the safety of the people, staged train wrecks never happened again… oh wait, they actually kept happening all across the county until the 1930s.
Quick Facts
The first train collision publicity stunt was done on May 30th, 1896 by Columbus & Hocking Valley Railroad company to promote Buckeye Park
Katy (K-T) was the nickname for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railway because it was originally just the Kansas-Texas line. Even after the change, KT remained the stock exchange symbol
A month after the crash Scott Joplin recorded a song called the “Great Crush Collision March”
Several sources claim 3 died from the crash but many say only two, the plaque at the site also says 2 so that’s what I stuck with. Same with the boiler explosions, some sources claim only one but the plaque says boilers as in multiple.
