Throughout the Beehive State’s history, human error and Mother Nature have on occasion created truly devastating results. At times, both share the blame. The state’s history has been peppered with natural disasters, airline and railway disasters, mining tragedies, and fires, among other catastrophic events.
Deseret News has, for 175 years, covered all of them. This is a sampling of events that have shattered lives and broken hearts. But many of them have also provided lessons that improved safety for others.
A school bus tragedy
One of the most tragic crashes in Utah history and the worst-ever railroad crossing crash — though not the worst train disaster — occurred Dec. 1, 1938, when a Jordan High School bus carrying about 40 students stopped in front of the railroad tracks near 10600 South and 300 West in South Jordan. The driver, Farrold Silcox, was looking for signs of a train, but could see nothing in the blizzardy conditions that day. Since he’d crossed the same tracks without ever encountering a train at the same time almost daily in the past, he pulled onto the tracks.
A northbound Denver & Rio Grande Western train, however, was not on its usual schedule and its crew, too, was unable to see because of the storm. The 50-car train slammed into the bus, pushing it a half-mile and scattering wreckage and bodies along its path.
In all, 23 school kids and Silcox died; the rest of the passengers were injured. Deseret News reported that just two passengers on the bus were able to walk when ambulances and first responders arrived. To this day, it’s thought to be the worst railroad crossing tragedy in U.S. history.
Seventy-five years later, Deseret News reported on a memorial erected in honor of those who perished. And safety rules changed with the wreck. Even now, as a result of that tragedy, school bus drivers are supposed to not only look, but open their door and listen for the sound of an approaching train.
Drivers be wary
Many crashes on Utah roads have been weather-related. And while you might expect snow, fog and cold to dominate, Utah’s varied seasons bring different potentially problematic conditions.
Eight people, including four children, were killed July 25, 2021, in a multicar pileup caused by a dust storm between Fillmore and Kanosh in Millard County. Another 10 people were taken to hospitals, including at least three who had critical injuries.
The crash involved 22 vehicles as high winds kicked up sand and dust that limited visibility.
Per the original Deseret News article, “Troopers said Monday they believe minor crashes initially blocked the roadway. While trying to stop for those crashes, a semitrailer is believed to have rear-ended a pickup truck, according to the UHP.” Others then slammed into the wreckage.
An even bigger pileup — the largest in Utah history — occurred Dec. 18, 1980, wrecking more than 134 vehicles near Point of the Mountain as drivers failed to recognize the light coating of ice on the road and adjust to reduced visibility. A minor accident launched a chain reaction that lasted minutes, not seconds, and included 78 northbound vehicles and 56 that were southbound. Almost unbelievably, no one died, though there were numerous injuries.
Weather’s not always a factor, either.
A dusty desert road about 45 miles from Escalante was the scene of a crash that killed 13 and injured 26 others when a cattle truck loaded with Boy Scouts, their leaders and several others rolled backwards off a 35-foot embankment June 10, 1963, tumbling down a ravine. A Deseret News reporter was among those killed, as were some Scouts and leaders and a Salt Lake teacher.
A monument was erected on the 30th anniversary of the tragedy.
In another crash, December 19, 1990, a semitrailer truck collided with a Greyhound bus, killing seven and injuring 21, some critically. Another 45 were temporarily displaced and stayed with nearby residents in the Evanston area, just over the Utah border.
According to one of the News’ articles, the impact knocked the Chicago-bound bus off the road “and it slid about 100 yards on its side before coming to rest against a fence at the bottom of another 15-foot embankment.” Law enforcement said it appeared the driver of the truck overcorrected.
Utah roads have been the scene of too many deadly crashes to provide more than a sampling.
Danger in the air
On Oct. 24, 1947, a United Airlines DC-6 crashed over Bryce Canyon, killing 53 people, which matched the national record at the time for deadly plane wrecks. That fact was not recognized for years, as a tiny baby born at the time of the crash or expelled from the womb was not counted among the dead. The mortuary filled out a death certificate at the time, but it was years before the count was updated.
The News reported that the pilot, E.L. McMillen, was trying to make an emergency landing at the Bryce Canyon Airport due to a fire onboard. He radioed that, frantic to lighten the plane so it would stay aloft, passengers and crew were tossing luggage, seats and other items from the plane. He thought they might make it, but the plane crashed, aflame, 1,500 yards short of the runway, with no survivors.
According to a later Deseret News story, “With the Cold War heating up, the FBI initiated a sabotage investigation. But it was later determined the fire started from a fuel overflow during transfer from one tank to another. It was ignited by the cabin heater intake scoop located in the belly of the plane, an area then inaccessible from the cabin.”
A United Air Lines Boeing 727 Jetliner caught fire while landing at the Salt Lake City airport on Nov. 11, 1965. Deseret News reported that 42 of the 91 people aboard died.
Other plane crashes have also made headlines over the years, including a chartered DC-3 plane with 13 aboard bound for a Brigham Young University-New Mexico football game that crashed in the hills northwest of Camp Williams Nov. 10, 1965, and burst into flames.
Ten people died in the early afternoon of Jan. 15, 1987, when a single-engine Mooney aircraft collided in midair over Kearns with a SkyWest aircraft carrying eight passengers.
It was subsequently determined that air traffic controllers were 51% responsible for the crash as “visibility at the time of the accident made it difficult to see each other without assistance from air traffic controllers.”
Cold-hearted Mother Nature
Snow, trees and rocks — some called it a rock slide, others an avalanche — shot down Bingham Canyon Feb. 17, 1926, smashing into and encapsulating businesses, homes and a boarding house. Despite varying counts, it’s now believed that 40 of the 75 who were buried in the debris died. The story became national news.
Other tragedies have been spun out over days and even weeks. That’s the story of the wicked 1948-49 winter, when harsh weather, including blizzard conditions, killed 76 people in the region, including 10 in Utah who died of exposure in January. Deseret News described the weather as a “frightful combination of both snow and cold” in which people, livestock and fruit trees died.
In contrast, the 1965 flash flood in Sheep Creek Canyon was as sudden as it was deadly.
A couple, their three children and two nephews were on a camping and fishing vacation near Flaming Gorge when a flash flood on June 9 overtook them. They all died. A construction worker called police after spotting a station wagon floating upside down in floodwaters near the Palisades Campground.
A family member who came to the flood site after learning of the deaths told Deseret News that “the river sounded like thunder because of all the big rocks that were flowing underneath.”
Over time, all but one of the bodies were recovered. Paul Swenson, who turned 13 the day before, was never found.
Trouble underground
Mines have been an important part of Utah history. And also a source of great sorrow for whole families and communities.
One of the greatest tragedies in Utah history occurred in 1900, when at least 200 miners on duty at the Winter Quarters mine in Scofield died in a morning explosion, the cause never learned. The disaster led to a union movement and mine safety reforms.
“Women and children waiting, moaning and crying out the names of their beloved ones and as every man is brought out from the mine on a stretcher, everyone rushes forward, raises the covering from the face and shrieks awful to hear penetrate the dark and gloomy atmosphere as someone rushes forward only to faint at the foot of their husband’s or father’s corpse,” is the description in the May 1, 1900, article.
Even President William McKinley sent his condolences.
Some households lost every male member; Robert Hunter died with three of his sons and four nephews, Deseret News reported. “At least 20 of the dead were mere boys who worked with their fathers as couplers and trap boys.”
It would not be the last underground tragedy. On March 8, 1924, a series of explosions at Mine No. 2 Utah Fuel in Castle Gate entombed 175 miners.
A hoped-for escape at the far end of the collapsed tunnel never occurred. Deseret News reported that all in the tunnel died in the “living grave” — fathers and sons, men who’d gotten jobs there just hours before and others. One, Andrew Gilbert, 73, had been hailed a hero in the Winter Quarters disaster in 1900.
Dec. 20, 1984, days before Christmas, 27 miners were trapped inside the Wilberg Mine in Emery County. Despite repeated efforts, would-be rescuers were repelled by toxic smoke pouring from the mine. It would take just three days shy of a year to bring the dead miners — 26 men and one woman — to the surface.
The following September, Deseret News reported that a monument was dedicated in a “short but solemn service.”
On Aug. 6, 2007, a “seismic event” that was a 3 a.m. collapse at the Crandall Canyon Mine measured 3.9 on the Richter scale. Close to an hour later, the Emery County Sheriff’s Office was notified and rescue attempts began. Six miners were trapped 1,800 feet underground.
The next day, part of a tunnel caved in with another seismic “bump.” Another on Aug. 16 killed two rescue team members and a federal inspector attempting to tunnel their way to the miners. The three died and six others were injured, buried in coal and debris.
The attempt to rescue the miners from underground was suspended on Day 12, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. noting it had gone from a “tragedy to a catastrophe.” Efforts to find their bodies continued from above ground until Aug. 31, when all search ended. The mine was later sealed, the miners’ remains inside.
Railroad wrecks
Utah’s worst all-time train wreck occurred near Promontory Point on the Lucin Cutoff early on Dec. 31, 1944. Two westbound trains smashed into each other about 18 miles west of Ogden, killing 48. Deseret News reported the dead included 29 U.S. Army and Navy personnel, nine railroad employees and 10 others, including a 15-year-old teen from Salt Lake City. An additional 83 people — including 44 more in the military — were hurt.
“Train wreck toll set at 48″ and “Camera highlights of the worst train wreck in the West” were headlines Deseret News readers woke to on New Year’s Day. An investigation found the engineer of an express mail train traveling about 60 mph had a heart attack and died seconds before his train slammed into the rear of a passenger and freight train going 18 mph.
A deadly blaze
Death is not the only way to reckon a tragedy. Among the most-often-recounted tragedies is a fire more than a century ago.
“Utah’s proud and prosperous mining camp has practically been wiped out of existence” by the worst fire in the state’s history, as Deseret News reported at the time. On Sunday morning, June 19, 1898, fire erupted, leaving at least 500 miners and members of their families “homeless and destitute.”
The fire began in the Freeman of America House about 4 a.m. “But before there could be any effective response, the hotel was completely enveloped and doomed to swift and certain destruction, as well as all contiguous buildings. There was no time for the removal of goods from stores, money from places of deposit, books and papers from shelves or safes, horses from barns — scarcely time to save human beings from being cremated alive," the story in the next day’s paper read.
The fire “resembled a great fire furnace which illuminated the heavens in all directions.”
The fire was stopped by blowing up houses that would have fed it, reports said. Then they breached the Marasac mill flume and sent water tumbling, quashing the inferno.