Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• The evening of August 12, 1939, luxury streamliner passenger train The City of San Francisco overturned and crashed into the Humboldt River Canyon in Nevada.
• Engineer Ed Hecox had pushed the train to 90 mph to make up for lost time after it arrived at a station half an hour late, raising suspicions of negligence.
• Investigations found that the rails had been sabotaged, and despite over a thousand leads, the perpetrator was never found.

When luxury streamliner train The City of San Francisco began chugging down the tracks on the evening of August 12, 1939, no one had any idea of what was waiting for them further down the railroad. Passengers were just finishing dinner and sipping their coffee or brandy in the dining car. Some had previously noticed that the train was moving at a slightly uncomfortable speed, but quickly brushed it off—until the smooth ride turned rough. Glasses trembled on tables, and beer bottles clattered to the floor. A passenger was launched into the aisle from her seat. Then everything went black.

The City of San Francisco was the most hypermodern train of its time. It was close to a quarter-mile longer than any other streamliner in existence at that point, and advertising only added to the intrigue with unreal claims of rocketing from Chicago to Oakland in under 40 hours. Its cars were painted with vivid scenes of the San Francisco landmarks, splashed with yellows and oranges and reds. Everything was plush on the inside. Among many first-class amenities were air conditioning, hot and cold running water, a full-service barber shop, and aerial antennas that picked up radio programs to listen to. Bedrooms and restrooms featured outlets for electric razors and curling irons. Even the cheapest coach ticket cost $90 for a round trip, and with a $5 extra fare tacked on, in today’s dollars it would translate to a luxe $2,276.

Traveling on this train of dreams was Berkeley, California, native F.S. Foote, who worked for IBM in New York and was returning there after eleven days on the western seaboard. He couldn’t shake the strange feeling plaguing him after San Francisco hit rough ground. The train streaked past Carlin, Nevada, at 9:30 p.m. and was headed toward a bridge over the Humboldt River Canyon. Suddenly, the lights went out. Foote felt as if the car he sat in was overturning, hurtling into the dark unknown. He was flung from that car as it crashed into the canyon below. Inside the train, another passenger trained in electrical construction frantically tried to connect the emergency lights without any success. The breathing of those around him became strained as the air conditioning disconnected and black residue from the fumes dusted their mouths. Others gulped breaths of night air as they struggled to rise to their feet.

Ed Hecox, the train’s engineer, also had a premonition. Gazing out the cab window, he spotted what appeared to be a green tumbleweed ahead of him. As he mused about how unusual it was to see a tumbleweed that color blowing around the desert in August, the train lurched to a stop. Hecox had accelerated the train to 90 mph to make up for lost time after it left the station half an hour late, but even slowing down to the 60 mph speed limit would have done nothing to prevent the impending disaster. After the crash, Hecox desperately ran a mile and a half down the track to seek help at a station in the nearby city of Harney. Volunteers poured in from the surrounding cities of Carlin, Elko, and Beowawe, but for some passengers on board, it was already too late. Fatal damage had been done to the Presidio and Mission Dolores cars at the moment of impact. Hecox later described his harrowing experience to the Northeastern Nevada Historical Society’s quarterly.

“As the engine stopped, I ran back,” he said. “All I could hear was the screams and moans of the injured and dying everywhere. There was dust, there was no wind, and the dust settled everywhere. I could not see a single living person. I started toward a Harney station one and a half miles away. I must have fallen 20 times on the way. I called all the doctors I could, asking them to bring nurses and bandage supplies. Then I returned to the scene of the accident with the bloody section crew.”

Train cars lay askew, and bodies were strewn around the dusty landscape. Disembodied arms and legs were randomly scattered. The crash had taken 24 lives, and once the 121 survivors who had been injured were evacuated to the Elko General Hospital, there were not enough beds. Some victims could only be accommodated with spaces on the floor. Proving that wealth could apparently buy a luxury ticket, but not extra room in the hospital, the president of Standard Oil lay on one such strip of floor, while porters reclined on the beds that were on either side of him. There was only one thing on the minds of everyone who read newspaper headlines that shouted in silence the next morning. How could a train this opulent and futuristic possibly come to such an end?

An investigation into the cause of the accident determined that it was sabotage. In a 2015 paper, Nevada museum director Christopher MacMahon observed that the crime may have been an act of rebellion against the many tentacles of a railroad referred to as the “Octopus of the West.” Railroad detective Dan O’Connell headed a team of agents who found that cars had jumped the track because some railroad spikes had been pulled out and a rail purposely moved inward. Newspapers half-sardonically announced they were looking for Tarzan Jr., because it was hard to fathom how anyone was able to lift a rail that heavy and move it alone. Some of the agents who went diving in the river discovered tools used for railroad construction in its muddy bottom. The Southern Pacific Railroad Company offered a $5,000 reward for any information leading to the perpetrator, soon raising it to $10,000.

“Officials gave the cause as sabotage for an entire rail had been moved 4 inches inward,” according to archival footage. “Fourteen cars plunged off the track, but the diesel-powered locomotive did not upset, although it thundered on a thousand feet beyond the wreckage…the car broke through a bridge and hurtled to the bed of the river. Damage is put at upwards of half a million dollars.”

Some argued that the sabotage claim was only meant to cover up for the railroad company’s negligence in allowing Hecox to disregard the speed limit. Southern Pacific hardly did much to dispel that impression when they tried to get away with the minimum compensation, granting Foote, who went through multiple surgeries and months of physical therapy, no more than the difference between a coach and luxury ticket. Trauma followed both passengers and rescuers for life. Volunteer Flora Collins admitted to still crying about the event forty years later. Contemporary news reports were scathing. After a photographer for the Elko Daily Free Press photographed the wreckage, with entire cars dangling over the bridge’s edge, outrage from the railroad company pushed him to respond with, “God knows, it would have been impossible to make it look worse than it was.”