The Train Wreck West of Esmond Station

Before dawn on January 28, 1903, two Southern Pacific passenger trains met head-on near Esmond, east of Tucson. Their locomotives and several cars burned. The first newspaper extra could only report that seven victims had been taken from the wreck; the next day the Arizona Daily Star estimated 22 dead and 45 injured. Those numbers were provisional. The investigation soon turned on a train order that the westbound conductor said he had never received.

Two Trains on One Track

The eastbound Crescent City Express, No. 8, and the westbound Pacific Express, No. 7, used the same main track. A Southern Pacific timetable advertisement identifies those names and directions, though its scheduled times do not establish when either train actually reached Esmond on the night of the wreck. The first Star extra said No. 7 was running as No. 9. Later coverage and the advertisement call the westbound train No. 7; the first report may have reflected an operating change or simply the confusion of the initial dispatch.

The collision occurred a few miles west of Esmond station, near Vail. The first extra said a brakeman walked to Vail with news of the wreck and a relief train left Tucson with physicians and nurses. It reported that both trains were burning. Its account of a detached rear Pullman car rolling back downhill to Tucson appeared in the same hurried issue. The newspaper also said four cars were entirely consumed. These were dispatches from a scene still being searched, not a completed accounting of the damage.

On January 29 the Star described a slight curve about sixteen miles east of Tucson and said burning fuel oil had added to the destruction. It printed names of dead and injured people, but cautioned that the toll could not yet be established. With cars burned and no complete passenger list immediately available, even the identity of some victims remained in question.

The Tucson Daily Citizen’s account from the day of the collision offers another view of the first confused hours. It said No. 7 had been delayed and No. 8 was also late. The paper described locomotives lying on opposite sides of the track after the impact, and burning oil spreading across the cars. Its afternoon update claimed eighteen bodies had reached Tucson. That figure, like the Star’s changing estimates, came before the work of identification and the inquests was complete.

A rear Pullman car from No. 8 escaped the fire but separated from the train and rolled toward Tucson. The Citizen reported that its porter tried to control it and that it finally struck a switch engine in the Tucson yard. The early Star extra also described its return, though the accounts differ in detail. The incident illustrates how far the effects of the collision extended beyond the heap of wreckage at Esmond.

The Order at Vail

The crucial question was what happened when No. 7 stopped at Vail for instructions. Conductor G. W. Parker told investigators that he arrived about 2:40 a.m. and received an order to proceed to the Wilmot siding, where he was to wait until about 3 a.m. for an eastbound freight. He insisted that he received no second order directing him to meet passenger train No. 8 at Esmond. The two orders mattered because one concerned a freight train farther west while the other governed the movement of two opposing passenger trains near Esmond.

Parker acknowledged in his statement that he had picked up two orders and left one on the counter, but said operator E. F. Clough had not called out to him about it. Clough gave a contrary account. According to the Star’s investigation coverage, he maintained that he had warned Parker of the order left behind. The newspaper reported that the order copy lacked Parker’s acknowledgment. These accounts do not establish precisely what words were exchanged in the Vail office; they establish why the inquests focused on the handling of the second order.

Dispatcher Gray testified that he had issued instructions for the trains to pass at Esmond and placed responsibility on Clough more directly. The January 30 report nevertheless described blame as an open question. Clough did not appear when summoned before the inquest, and subsequent reports said he had disappeared. The February 3 Star item stated that nothing had been heard from him and treated claims that he remained near Tucson as unconfirmed.

At the Wreck

Parker said the impact threw him to the floor of the car in which he was riding. He went forward and found the engines smashed, cars burning, and engineer John W. Bruce among the wreckage. In his account, he and others moved passengers out of the coaches and sleepers; he said the two forward cars caught fire and burned. His description is testimony from a participant, and the newspaper printed it while the inquiry was still under way.

Both engineers died. The contemporary coverage names Bruce on No. 7 and Wilkey on No. 8. George McGrath, the fireman on No. 7, was also killed. One later clipping about his funeral carries a heading calling him an engineer, but the wreck accounts and its own description of a Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen escort support identifying him as a fireman. McGrath’s remains were sent to Waterbury, Connecticut, where relatives and railroad colleagues attended his funeral.

The fire made recovery and identification difficult. In the January 30 coverage, investigators identified Eugene P. Willard of San Francisco in part through a knife bearing his name; the report also identified his wife. Other families had no such certain answer. On February 3, the Star reported that two unidentified victims had been buried in Tucson’s Citizens’ Cemetery after efforts to establish their identities failed. Southern Pacific had purchased the burial lot. The newspaper said identification of those remains was impossible at that point.

The January 29 Citizen reported that relatives and friends came to Tucson and then to the undertakers’ rooms hoping to identify missing travelers. The fire had destroyed clothing and other ordinary means of recognition. The February 6 Culver verdict would identify three of the bodies by name—engineers Bruce and Wilkey and fireman McGrath—while describing eleven others as people whose identities the jurors could not determine from the evidence before them. That was the jury’s accounting of remains examined, not a complete passenger manifest.

Work continued beyond the initial rescue. The Star described crews clearing wreckage and laying a temporary track while physicians and nurses attended the injured. A February 2 Citizen report said a Southern Pacific adjuster was meeting people who presented claims for lost baggage and personal effects. Some railroad business resumed quickly, but the search for names and the effort to account for property continued alongside it.

The Numbers in the Headlines

The Star’s January 28 extra gave an initial count of seven victims recovered and warned that losses could be much higher. Its January 29 front page announced “22 Dead; 45 Injured,” expressly calling these estimated casualties. A February 7 Arizona Republican report of the Culver inquest said fourteen bodies had been taken from the wreck. The January 28, 1904, Tucson Daily Citizen retrospective also said fourteen bodies had been recovered, but expressly stated that the loss of life was never definitely known. It separately reported that Tim Donohue, an injured Southern Pacific employee, died in a Tucson hospital about ten days after the collision. The fourteen recovered bodies therefore should not be treated without qualification as the total number of deaths. The burned remains and the absence of a complete passenger list help explain the uncertainty.

Two Findings About Responsibility

There were separate inquests amid a dispute over which justice had jurisdiction. On February 7 the Arizona Republican reported that the Culver jury found fourteen bodies had been recovered, exonerated Parker and the No. 7 crew, and placed responsibility on operator Clough for failing to deliver the second order. On February 13 the Tucson Daily Citizen reported that Justice Richey’s jury reached the same conclusion about Clough’s carelessness. A separate contemporary account said the jury criticized Southern Pacific for failing to guard the wreckage against looting, which hindered identification. These are newspaper reports of the findings; the original jury records have not been examined for this article.

The compilation reproduces the Culver jury’s verdict as printed by the Citizen on February 6. It says the crews had performed their duties diligently and specifically faults Clough at Vail for failing to deliver the instruction that No. 7 meet No. 8 at Esmond siding. The text names Bruce, Wilkey, and McGrath, then acknowledges eleven unknown people among the remains. The separate Richey inquest was still being completed afterward. Its February 13 newspaper notice called the decision identical in its conclusion about Clough. The jurisdiction dispute explains why accounts speak of two juries without requiring two different collisions or contrary verdicts.

A February 20 Star item then reported that Southern Pacific had removed Parker from his position. According to that account, the company held that a conductor had to maintain its train-order discipline, though it also recognized Parker’s conduct after the crash in helping the injured and recovering the dead. A January 1904 retrospective said Parker later returned to railroad service and then resigned. The employment decisions were separate from the coroner’s reported verdicts. Neither account establishes that Parker received the missing order.

The surviving clippings leave the exchange at Vail disputed. They do show its consequences: two passenger trains approached one another on the same track, the second order failed to govern No. 7’s movement, and the resulting wreck left families and investigators trying for days to establish who had died. The newspaper headlines captured the shock in Tucson. The later testimony and burial notices reveal the slower work that followed.

Source Notes

Arizona Daily Star, January 28, 1903, extra, “Horrible Collision” (supplied clipping, Esmond wreck.jpg).

Arizona Daily Star, January 29, 1903, front page, “22 Dead; 45 Injured” (supplied clipping, Esmond train.jpg).

Arizona Daily Star, January 30, 1903, “Investigating the Esmond Wreck,” pages 1–2 (supplied clippings, Esmond investigation.jpg and Esmond investigation page 2.jpg).

Arizona Daily Star, January 31, 1903, “Officials’ Testimony” (supplied clipping, Esmond testimony.jpg).

Arizona Daily Star, February 3, 1903, “Bodies Wreck Victims Interred” (supplied clipping, Esmond unidentified  Star 3 feb 03.jpg).

Arizona Daily Star, February 20, 1903, page 8, report of Parker’s dismissal (supplied clipping, image(20260927-231558).png).

Contemporary report of the coroner’s finding: Austin Daily Herald, February 13, 1903, page 1, “Jury Faults Operator in Esmond Train Wreck,” https://newspaperarchive.com/austin-daily-herald-feb-13-1903-p-1/.

Southern Pacific schedule advertisement and George McGrath funeral notice (supplied clippings, Esmond schedules.jpg and Esmond Engineer buried.jpg; dates not established from the crops).

Pima County, “Julian Wash History,” https://www.pima.gov/222/Julian-Wash-History; Arizona Historical Society photograph record, Arizona Memory Project, https://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/nodes/view/107060.

Greater Tucson Fire Foundation, Tucson Fire Department historical compilation, “January 28, 1903, Esmond Train Wreck” (PDF supplied by reader), pp. 2–3, 23–25, 28–31; reproduces Tucson Daily Citizen, January 28–29 and February 2, 6, and 13, 1903; Arizona Republican, February 7, 1903; and Tucson Daily Citizen, January 28, 1904. This is a later collection of period clippings, not a contemporaneous fire department incident report.