Railroad Disaster of September 1906 - Dover, OK
Posted by: 
The Snowdog
N 35° 57.290 W 097° 54.910
14S E 597830 N 3979482
This is the site of two railroad accidents; a disaster in which four passengers were killed, and an incident in which a spur bearing several unoccupied cars washed out; at the North Canadian River, south of Dover, Oklahoma.
Waymark Code: WM13E39
Location: Oklahoma, United States
Date Posted: 11/20/2020
Views: 5
The September 1906 railroad disaster occurred before Oklahoma became a state. The bridge over the Canadian River was washed out by floods and, unaware of this, a passenger train (The Number 12 Northbound) went into the water. Four were killed and many had narrow escapes, some being pulled from the water many miles downstream. The wreckage of the old locomotive (Number 614) is still visible when the river is low. You can read an account of the accident at the link below.
And then in 1957 a side track bearing many empty cars was washed out by yet another flood. The remnants of many of these cars can be seen on the north side of the river. A geocache is hidden in one of them, and that cache contains a printout of the original Daily Oklahoma article about the 1906 disaster. However, these are not the remnants of the 1906 disaster.
There is a parking area on the east side of the highway just north of the river, but it is rough going and you might need a high-clearance vehicle. To access the crash area, you should walk along the riverbank rather than cross the highway and the railroad tracks (which is trespassing). Even better, take a kayak and pay a visit to the locomotive as well, if the water is low enough to see it.
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