Photo – Map of area of 1904 Azusa Train Wreck in Sweetwater County – Courtesy Sweetwater Now
Looking back at November 17, 1904.
The era of the railroad in Wyoming. What an exciting time. Shorter travel times between towns for both products and people. Until products and people met in a horrible crash. The worst accident, well maybe not an accident, in Sweetwater County history.
It is known as the Azusa Train Wreck of 1904. Azusa was a town in Sweetwater County that no longer exists. Azusa, like another lost locale – Marston – were two sidings that once existed between Green River and Granger. Siding? What is a siding? A siding, in railroad terminology, is a low-speed track section distinct from the main line or through route. Sidings may be used for marshalling (classifying), stabling, storing, loading, and unloading train cars. Thanks to the Sweetwater County Museum for finding the 1915 map that shows the location of Azusa and Marston sidings. Back to the crash.
Just before midnight, around 11:59 PM on November 11, 1904, a westbound passenger train, Passenger Number 3, collided – head on – with an eastbound freight train, Number 1661, approximately four miles east of Granger. The impact was deadly. Mangled metal strewn through the sagebrush, dead bodies strewn with the metal.
Fourteen people were killed, including both engineers, two firemen, a brakeman, a conductor, and several passengers. The headline read: “FOURTEEN PERISHED IN GRANGER COLLISION Frank Nowlan, Mail Clerk, will recover… Matin Samuelson, a survivor, gives graphic story of awful details — Body of Woman and Child Under Wreckage.
The conduct of the Union Pacific operator, stationed at Granger, came under scrutiny and a coroner’s jury empaneled by Sweetwater County Coroner, Mike Dankowski, on November 18th ruled that “we the jury further find that said collision was caused by the carelessness and gross negligence of J.E. Miller, the operator at Granger. Miller was found to have communicated the wrong orders to the conductor and engineer of the freight train.”
The duty of an operator was to schedule and relay train orders to the engineers and conductors. J.E. Miller did not stick around long, though. Miller dropped out of sight immediately following the crash.
With 14 killed, the train crash at Azusa, on this date in 1904, remains the worst train wreck in the history of Sweetwater County.
