Rocky Mountain News Photo Collection Used to Remember One of Colorado's Most Tragic Accidents in History

In 2007, the Rocky Mountain News ran a series of special articles about a tragic school bus accident that occurred early in the morning on December 14th, 1961. You can read the complete story here, The Crossing.

The Crossing examined the lifelong implications of Colorado's worst traffic accident — a 1961 collision between a high-speed passenger train and a school bus a few miles from Greeley, a crash that took the lives of 20 children and left behind 17 survivors and a grief-stricken community. The stories, which were told with the support and participation of nearly every family touched by the tragedy, showed how a single moment in time uncoiled through decades, shaping people for the rest of their lives. 

The story is divided up into chapters that detail the past and present lives of the families of the victims and the survivors. Each chapter describes how the people of Auburn's lives were changed. 

Access to the original reporting had been lost when the Rocky Mountain News ceased operation in 2009. The newspaper collection in Western History and Genealogy was used to resurrect the project. The reporters created the site using the newly digitized Rocky Mountain News Photo Collection to add photographs to the detailed story. WH and G has the entire run of the Rocky Mountain News on microfilm in addition to thousands of physical issues of the paper. The microfilmed papers are available to the public for viewing in the library. The Digital Collections of Rocky Mountain News photos and an index to articles can be accessed on the Internet anywhere. The stories were written by Kevin Vaughan, Photographs taken by Chris Schneider, and the video was shot by Tim Skillern and Laressa Bachelor.