Survivor recalls worst train wreck in Montana history
Warren Jones and Maurice Odquist were among the passengers on the Milwaukee railroad’s Olympian train just after midnight on June 19, 1938, when the train plunged into the rain-swollen waters of Custer Creek 26 miles east of Miles City.
Nearly 50 people were killed and scores more were injured, but Jones and Odquist were unhurt. As it happened, they were both packing cameras, and as soon as it was light enough they began photographing the dramatic, devastating scene, the worst train wreck in the history of Montana. They ended up shooting remarkably similar pictures of twisted wreckage and partly submerged passenger cars.
Jones sent his film to his father in Milwaukee for developing, while Odquist apparently sent his to Life magazine as quickly as he could. On July 4, 1938, Life splashed Odquist’s photos all over a spread that was headlined “A Survivor Photographs the Worst American Train Wreck Since 1887.”
People are also reading…
“He was the smart one,” said Jones, a rancher and banker who spent most of his life in Harlowton and now lives in Billings.
The report in the June 20, 1938, Billings Gazette.
Not that Jones was looking for glory, then or now.
“I’ve always said, we were more spectators than survivors.”
Jones was born in Butte and his family moved to Milwaukee when he was 7 or 8, but he used to return to Montana every summer to spend time on his mother’s family ranch near Two Dot. In 1938, when Jones was 17, he and his cousin, John Baxter, who was 10 or 11, booked passage out to Montana aboard the Olympian.
The Olympian, as every Milwaukee train that ran between Chicago and Tacoma was known, was a fast air-conditioned train, described in a contemporary newspaper account as “the railroad’s pride.” Shortly before their departure, Jones’ father changed the boys’ accommodations, moving them from a “tourist” Pullman car into a standard Pullman, which was roomier. That decision probably saved their lives.
Jones and his cousin boarded the train in Milwaukee, chugging into Montana about 10 p.m. on June 18. They crossed the Yellowstone River at the Calypso bridge near Terry, next stop Miles City, passing through country that Jones said was “about as deserted a chunk of Montana as you can find.” Jones was sleeping in a lower berth, with his cousin up above. It was quiet, thanks to the heavy green curtains sealing off each berth.
At 12:35 a.m., the train came to a shuddering halt. Back in his sleeper car, a car or two away from the observation car that brought up the rear of the 11-car train, Jones wasn’t even aware that the train had wrecked.
“I didn’t have any sense of being in an impact accident,” he said. “I just became aware of that fact that it had gotten awfully quiet.” Though he heard little and saw nothing, Jones has vivid memories of a particular odor.
“The thing I remember more clearly than anything else was becoming aware, as I woke up, of the overpowering odor of sage brush,” he said.
It was the smell of all the sage that had been ripped from the hills and plains in the Custer Creek drainage, which had just been hit with what The Billings Gazette would refer to the next day as a “cloudburst of unprecedented proportions.” Twenty minutes before the disaster, a Milwaukee station agent reported that Custer Creek was carrying about 4 feet of water. That was a lot for the usually dry creek, but nothing to worry about.
Then came the flash flood. By the time the Olympian reached Custer Creek, the stream was flowing at an estimated depth of 20 feet, creating enough force to weaken the two middle piers of the iron and concrete trestle, which was 180 feet long. When the train hit the first weakened support, it gave way. The engine and its tender car flew through the air into the west bank of the creek. The mail and baggage cars smashed into the engine, with two day coaches and one of the tourist sleepers just behind them.
It was determined later, when the speed-recorder tape on the locomotive was recovered, that the Olympian was traveling at 51 mph, well under the speed limit of 65 for that stretch of track. Still, 51 mph makes for a great deal of momentum, given that the engine and its tender together weighed 440 tons.
The wreck left the two other tourist sleepers in the middle of the creek, rapidly filling with water and silt. Jones’ Pullman was high and dry on the undamaged tracks on the east side of Custer Creek, and inside the sleeper everything was strangely calm.
“There was no running up and down the aisle screaming and crying,” Jones said. “It was really rather quiet. The only problem I remember, some people were having trouble finding their shoes because they’d set them down and they slid down the aisle.”
Jones said his cousin didn’t even wake up, so he roused him.
“I said, ‘John, I think we’re in a wreck, and we’re probably going to be late into Harlo in the morning.’ And he says, ‘S—-,’ and went back to sleep.”
A brakeman got out of the train to walk back to put some flares behind the train, but Jones doesn’t remember anyone else going outside. There was nothing they could do anyway, since everyone who needed help was in the raging creek or on the other side of the washed-out bridge. And if you looked out the window, all you could see in the dark was water everywhere, seemingly on all sides.
Jones made his way through his car and into the dining car, where he met a porter and a dining room conductor. They had just crawled out of one of the tourist Pullmans, ahead of the dining car. It was still attached to the diner, but teetering precariously over the water, into which it soon fell.
“They didn’t say much at all,” Jones recalled. “They were both in a state of excitement and shock.”
After a while, Jones went back to sleep.
The June 21, 1938, Billings Gazette.
At first light, a few passengers started wandering outside. Among them were Jones and Odquist, both with their cameras. Jones was carrying his Contax, a German-made camera that used 35mm film. Shortly after he went outside, Jones said, a rescue engine from Miles City pulled up on the other side of Custer Creek. It had come out of the west, and its headlight stood out against the dark sky behind it.
Jones snapped a picture just as the engine’s headlight appeared over the top of the crippled locomotive that had been pulling the Olympian. A virtually identical photo, though with a man standing on top of one of the downed railroad cars, was taken by Odquist and was the photo featured on the first page of the Life magazine spread.
It was described as being the first picture of the wreck, but Jones doesn’t think so. The sky is noticeably darker in his photo, Jones said, and the train cars in the foreground are almost black, whereas in Odquist’s photo quite a bit of detail is visible on the cars. It is possible to lighten some photos in the darkroom, but Jones said his photo was taken when it was so dark that no amount of work in the darkroom would have brought up any additional details of the cars in the foreground.
Jones said he and Odquist shot some other pictures from the same perspective. He even remembers bumping into Odquist while getting one photo, though at the time he didn’t know who he was. Jones doesn’t recall hearing anything but the sound of rushing water.
After he shot the last 12 frames on his roll of film, Jones went back to his car, which eventually was taken by another engine to the Northern Pacific tracks south of the river, and then on to Miles City, which they reached about 3:30 on the afternoon of June 19. From there, after letting their families know they were safe, Jones and his cousin continued on to the station in Harlowton, and then to the ranch near Two Dot.
At the ranch, Jones mailed his film back to his father in Milwaukee. His father, also a photo buff, used to develop all his son’s film. Jones never did see the negatives. His father sent him back 5-by-7-inch prints of the wreck.
Jones figures Odquist either went to Miles City when he did, called Life magazine to let them know he had some photos, then returned to the scene of the wreck to get some additional pictures the next day. It is also possible Odquist stayed on the scene until the next day, but Jones said it would have made more sense for him to go into Miles City first.
Jones said Odquist, described by Life as head of the marketing division for the American Can Co., had been traveling by train from Florida to Seattle.
Meanwhile, recovery efforts at Custer Creek continued for days. The official count of the dead at the time was 47, with 60 others injured. The body of a woman believed to have been a passenger on the train was found in the Yellowstone River the next day at Glendive, 50 miles away. Custer Creek dumped into the Yellowstone 2,500 feet south of the railroad bridge.
Another body was found in the river at Sidney three months after the wreck. The Gazette reported that one recovered body was determined to have been an embalmed corpse that was being carried on the train.
Terry Gunther, a local collector of Milwaukee railroad memorabilia, recently met Jones and has been digging into details of the 1938 wreck. Based on death certificates and newspaper accounts, Gunther believes the actual death count was 48, and that the train was carrying 218 people.
Jones went on to be a rancher, with a place near Harlowton, and also a banker. At one time he served on the Montana Power Co. board of directors, and on the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He and his wife moved to Billings four years ago.
Jones said it wasn’t until he retired from ranching that he had much time to think about the train wreck of ’38. He started doing some research about it, and in 2004 he and his son drove to the scene of the wreck. The Milwaukee abandoned its rail line across Montana years ago, but the rebuilt trestle still stands, part of a county road.
Jones said he passed over the trestle by train many times in the years following the wreck, but only at night. His visit in 2004 was the first time he’d seen it in daylight, and the first time he’d been on the ground since 1938. He took some color photos to join his collection of black-and-whites taken on the day of the tragedy.
Since meeting Gunther a couple of months ago — after The Gazette published a story about Gunther’s Milwaukee railroad collection on Jan. 8 — Jones has begun delving more deeply into the facts surrounding the wreck, collecting documents, articles and other people’s photographs of the event.
Jones doesn’t have any serious regrets about sending his film to his father, but he said his father told him more than once that he should have mailed it directly to Life magazine.
“My dad never forgave me for letting that guy make all that money,” he said.
Be the first to know
Get local news delivered to your inbox!
