1 Information about F. C. Smith's accident on the Denver and Boulder Valley Railway Company, which is described in this paragraph, all comes from the Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado, First Annual Report of the Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado, for Year Ending June 30, 1885 (Denver, Colorado: Collier & Cleaveland Lith. Co., State Printers, 1886), 396.
2 It is highly likely that more accidents occurred in Colorado from July 1884 to June 1885 than were reported or recorded. Walter Licht, Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983), 183.
3 Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado, First Annual Report. 255
4 Ibid., 256.
5 Licht, Working for the Railroad, 183.
6 Nineteenth-century brakemen were far more likely to be injured than any other occupation. Mark Aldrich, Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety 1828-1965 (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 104. Footnote citation: Steven W. Usselman, “The Lure of Technology and the Appeal of Order: Railroad Safety Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America,” Business and Economic History 2.21 (1992): 290.
7 This paper only counted and considered worker accidents. There were also passengers and people not related with the railroads involved in accidents. See the First Annual Report of the Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado.
8 Steven W. Usselman, Regulating Railroad Innovation: Business, Technology, and Politics in America, 1840-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1, Ibid., 2.
9 In comparison, the total number of men killed in the Battle of Shiloh, the bloodiest day in American history, was 3,482. Ibid.
10 Image originally appeared in the September 23, 1865 issue of Harper's Weekly. The description of the image comes from Aldrich's Death Rode the Rails cover. Jim Harter, American Railroads of the Nineteenth Century: A Pictorial History of Wood Engravings (Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 1998), 241.
11 Usselman, “The Lure of Technology and the Appeal of Order,” 290.
12 A large literature exists on the history of nineteenth-century railroad accidents. Much of the literature, such as Walter Licht's Working for the Railroad, discusses the most common injuries incurred by different occupations in the railroad industry. Aldrich's Death Rode the Rails and Usselman's Regulating Railroad Innovation focus on railroad accidents and fatalities (for both passengers and workers), the development of technologies intended to prevent accidents (such as automatic couplers and brakes), the growth of mutual-aid societies and large-scale unions aimed to combat railroad company neglect (like the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the Knights of Labor), and company and national legislation hoping to make the railroad industry safer.
13 For more information on the topic of railroad depots, see any of the texts mentioned in the literature review.
14 Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado, First Annual Report.
15 Geographic Names Information Systems (GNIS), "GNIS Feature Search," USGS, http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/f?p=139:1:2594013686927097 (accessed August 18, 2010), "Map of Colorado" in Traffic Department Santa Fe Route, Atlas of the Sante Fe Route: From Lake Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico, City of Mexico & Pacific Ocean (Topeka, Kansas: unknown publication information, 1889), unknown page number.
16 Each railroad company numbered their bridges and mile markers differently (i.e. each company independently chose where to place mile-marker 1). Little record remains indicating where "mile 1" or "bridge 1" was for each company.
17 Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado, First Annual Report.
18 If a city, such as Denver, Colorado, had more than one railroad company operating in it, the profits from every company were added together to create a total station profit. If a station listed both freight and passenger revenues, the combined revenue was used since it would not have mattered to nineteenth-century railroad workers whether they had to work on either type of car.
19 Division points are important because they are the locations in which trains with workers began at and ended at during the day. For example, a train leaving from Denver carrying goods early in the morning would return back to Denver at the end of the workday.
20 These are the only cities in which switchmen were injured. These stations also had the highest revenues, which also appears to suggest that they were division points. Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado, First Annual Report.
21 Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado, First Annual Report, 504.
22 Denver, Pueblo, and La Junta had 89 accidents combined. Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado, First Annual Report.
23 The terrain in the eastern half of Colorado is considerably flatter than in the western half, which has the Rocky Mountains.
24 Historic population data was found through the Colorado Division of Local Government State Demography Office. 1890 data was chosen over 1880 data because more cities reported population in the 1890 data. Because the accident data is from 1884-1885, using the 1890 census is justifiable. Colorado Division of Local Government: State Demography Office, "Historical Census Population," Colorado Department of Local Affairs, https://dola.colorado.gov/demog_webapps/hcp_parameters.jsf (accessed August 20, 2010).
25 Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado, First Annual Report, 254.
26 Ibid., 254, 255.
27 Ibid., 254.
28 Ibid.
29 Robert S. Gillepsie, "Partial List of Major Railroad Hospitals in the United States," Railway Surgery, http://railwaysurgery.org/List.htm (accessed August 23, 2010).
30 Toral Patel and Richard White, "The Expansion of the Western Railroad," Spatial History Project, http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/../visualizations/viz145.html (accessed August 23, 2010).
31 The five deaths occurred at Wheeler, Riverside, and Otto. Compare these cities' locations at the ends of the 1885 railroad track to their middling locations on 1893 railroad track. Ibid.
32 Information about Ben McGovern comes from the Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado, First Annual Report, 194.
33 Descriptions of the categories can be found in the “About” text.
34 The actual ratio is probably higher than two to one because brakemen were grouped together with other professions who rode trains into a category known as "other trainmen." Switchmen were also part of a category which included other occupations, namely flagmen and watchmen. Group VIII includes the majority of Colorado, parts of New Mexico, Texas, Missouri, and all of Oklahoma, Indian Territory, Kansas, and Arkansas. Interstate Commerce Commission, Statistician to the Commission, Seventh Annual Report on the Statistics of Railways in the United States for the Year Ending June 30, 1894 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1895), 84.
35 Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado, First Annual Report.
36 Ibid.
References
Aldrich, Mark. Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety 1828-1965. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
Colorado Division of Local Government: State Demography Office. "Historical Census Population." Colorado Department of Local Affairs. https://dola.colorado.gov/demog_webapps/hcp_parameters.jsf (accessed August 20, 2010).
Geographic Names Information Systems (GNIS). "GNIS Feature Search." USGS. http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/f?p=139:1:2594013686927097 (accessed August 18, 2010).
Gillepsie, Robert S. "Partial List of Major Railroad Hospitals in the United States." Railway Surgery. http://railwaysurgery.org/List.htm (accessed August 23, 2010).
Harter, Jim. American Railroads of the Nineteenth Century: A Pictorial History of Wood Engravings. Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 1998.
Interstate Commerce Commission, Statistician to the Commission. Seventh Annual Report on the Statistics of Railways in the United States for the Year Ending June 30, 1894. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1895.
Licht, Walter. Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983.
"Map of Colorado." In Traffic Department Santa Fe Route, Atlas of the Sante Fe Route: From Lake Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico, City of Mexico & Pacific Ocean. Topeka, Kansas: unknown publication information, 1889.
Patel, Toral and Richard White. "The Expansion of the Western Railroad." Spatial History Project. http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/../visualizations/viz145.html (accessed August 23, 2010).
Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado. First Annual Report of the Railroad Commissioner of the State of Colorado, for Year Ending June 30, 1885. Denver, Colorado: Collier & Cleaveland Lith. Co., State Printers, 1886.
Usselman, Steven W. Regulating Railroad Innovation: Business, Technology, and Politics in America, 1840-1920. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Usselman, Steven W. "The Lure of Technology and the Appeal of Order: Railroad Safety Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America." Business and Economic History 2.21 (1992).
Author Information Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to Evgenia Shnayder eshnayder@stanfordalumni.org.
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