A farmer stands next to the battered railroad crossing sign four days after the tragedy. The crossing had no flashing lights or automatic arms, just two road signs to warn motorists. (BILL PEERY/ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS/1961)
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.
This photograph depicts the angle at which the road and the tracks intersected. The bus is parked in the area where Duane Harms stopped to look for a train before driving over the crossing. The photo is from the trial exhibits of defense attorney Jim ...
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.
Comments
too bad it's built with Flash — that cuts a lot of people off from seeing the article
i took a guess at the page URL and was able to get past the intro page which is unusable without Flash; instead of sending readers to the intro page, i suggest they start here:
http://thecrossingstory.com/chapters/1.html
looking forward to reading the story
Nearly seven years later and this helped me access this beautiful and terrible article - thank you, anon.
I also would like to get a copy of the booklet The Rocky Mountain News published. Can any one tell me how to get it?
Add new comment