Part two of a two-part series
“Any little gopher hole could and did start washouts,” wrote Houston area historian Ingrid Julsrud. Washouts of train tracks were expensive mishaps for the railroads and inconvenient interruptions for the daily lives of residents. During the first two decades of the 1900s, the tracks around Mound Prairie were especially susceptible to washouts during the spring and summer rainy seasons. Then, there would be no trains reaching Houston for as many as two or more days.
“It seemed like the town was asleep and people didn’t know what to do with themselves,” wrote Julsrud, describing what she termed “long days,” those without train service. In the early 1900s, that meant days without mail, without newspapers. “The trains really kept us alive.”
However, if the damaged tracks were west of Houston and there were several days without regular train service, a train would arrive from La Crosse to bring mail and supplies. But then it would have to back up all the way to La Crosse. In later years, when automobiles were available, the Houston postmaster sometimes drove to La Crosse to pick up the mail.
Washouts followed by repairs were so frequent around Mound Prairie, between Houston and Hokah, that the railroad finally relocated the road bed “quite a distance south.” That was a financial benefit to the railroad but a disappointment to passengers, since the trains no longer stopped at the Mound Prairie Store where passengers often got off or boarded the train.
That also meant that riders were deprived of further fascination by the stylish apparel of Mrs. Blumentritt. The younger passengers thought she was the “very height of fashion and must have come from New York.” She rode the train often, being the wife of the ticket agent at Mound Prairie.
Washouts of train beds and bridge supports caused by heavy rain and flash flooding (maybe also aided by gophers) were on ongoing threat and the main cause of train derailments. The railroad employed a crew of men in every city and village to patrol the tracks and make minor repairs. They were known as section men and were directed by a section boss. Each crew was assigned a section of track to inspect and traveled on handcars every day. Those four-wheeled vehicles were called handcars because the earliest ones were propelled by four men who “pumped a lever up and down like a teeter-totter.” They could attain an impressive amount of speed. In later years, they were powered by gasoline engines.
Julsrud surmised most train wrecks occurred at night before the tracks were inspected the next morning. However, excessive speed, at any hour, might cause an empty box car to “bump along and finally jump the tracks.” It could pull other cars off behind it, resulting in a pile-up. So, wrecks might involve freight trains, but they were not as upsetting as were passenger train derailments.
She recalled only three train wrecks during her long life in the Root River Valley. The Money Creek railroad wreck occurred when she was only age eight on February 1, 1909. Heavy rain and a flash flood washed out the approaches to a trestle bridge. The local newspaper reported, “The wrecking crew completed their work at Money Creek Railroad wreck on Tuesday, and the damaged cars have been taken to La Crosse for repairs.”
Train wrecks were of great interest to area residents, and wreckage attracted large crowds – even to remote sites. Julsrud was unable to locate a record of time and place of the next derailment she remembered. Believed to have been around 1912 to 1914, it also happened west of Houston, thought to involve a bridge over the Root River, possibly the bridge near Cushon’s Peak. “People walked the tracks all the way from town to see and take pictures.”
A couple of decades later, around 1935, a derailment occurred, also west of Houston but farther away in an area known as Yellow Banks. By that time, people owned automobiles, so they drove through Omodt Valley to park near the old Money Creek station, but they still had to walk a mile or two to view the wreckage.
John Sand of Houston began working on a section crew in 1932, during the Great Depression, when everyone was looking for a job. “We thought a lot of 35 cents an hour,” he told a newspaper reporter. “At that time, the railroad had a lot of money and hired everybody … anyone who could work hard.” He started working on and off during the summer and was glad when chosen for full-time employment. Sand was known for being able to drive a five-inch spike in four strikes.
Sand said the tracks needed constant attention by three-men section crews, who rode in little motor cars. During inclement weather, they traveled ahead of trains on the lookout for possible washouts or shifting ties.
Much larger than section crews were repair crews, consisting of 100 men, who replaced every other tie, tamping them down by hand. Eating and sleeping on the tracks, they had 10 to 12 sleepers and needed three cooks to feed everybody.
Because his father was injured while working for the railroad, Ernie Fowler of La Crescent began working in railroading in 1915 because he was the oldest son in the family, even though he was only 14 years-old. He worked for the Milwaukee Road in Houston County for 39 of his nearly 50-year railroad career.
“There used to be a lot traffic,” he told a newspaper writer. “It is hard to think of anything they didn’t haul.”
The most visible railroad employee was the local depot agent who among other duties, sent and received telegraphs. Robert Kies of rural Brownsville said he worked at almost every station in Houston County, beginning in 1950. His longest tenure was 21 years at La Crescent. Kies recalled passenger traffic ending in the late 1950s and the Houston station closing around 1968. Caledonia waved goodbye to the last freight train in 1976.
Sources: Remembering Old Times, Houston During the Post Card Era by Ingrid Julsrud, 1993. “Railroading’s glory days,” Houston County News, 12 Nov. 1979.
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