"History: In 1884, Northern Colorado was the site of a tragic circus train fire
On a peaceful early fall evening in 1884, hundreds of local residents flocked to see the Orion circus, reveling in the never-before-seen spectacles and exotic animals. Trekking home again about 10 p.m., they could not have imagined that only a few hours after loading animals and equipment onto the circus train, the tired workers would be engulfed in flames.
Heading toward Greeley, with Golden the ultimate destination, the circus trains had just passed Windsor when an engineer saw a car on fire. He immediately uncoupled the car to avert further damage. But the sleeping men inside had no easy way of escaping the flames; the large front sliding door was closed, with berths containing sleeping men up against it. An empty berth had been the recipient of trash, which was burning briskly, filling the car with smoke.
Having been overcome by the smoke, the sleeping men were hard to arouse. Two men crawled out of a small window and tossed in water. Men began pushing other men out the window, sometimes harshly in their haste, and a couple of intrepid men tried to get inside to save the rest. Meanwhile, seeing the flames and hearing the commotion, the animals, in another car, began stampeding in terror.
There were no hoses or buckets to fight the flames.
One man put blankets on the burned survivors, who were in agony. It was, reported the Fort Collins Courier, a “scene terrible beyond description” — with the animals howling, the injured and dying men moaning, the “distant cry of coyotes” on the lonely prairie beyond and indescribable odors. While all that was going on, the engineer who had uncoupled the car had gone to get help, soon bringing back a doctor, who aided the injured, setting broken limbs and doing what he could to ease the pain of burns. At daylight. a flat car bore the deceased into Greeley for burial. The bodies were all put into the same large coffin; a Presbyterian minister conducted services at the gravesite. Weld County bore the expense of burial, the manager of the circus declining to take financial responsibility.
A jury empaneled by the coroner could not determine a cause for the fire because the remainder of the crew had left immediately to fill their engagement in Golden and could not be interviewed. However, some of the injured men reported that there had been two barrels of gasoline in the car that may have been ignited by sparks from the engine or from torches used to light the car inside.
In all, more than a dozen men, all workers who put up and took down tents or helped out in other ways, were severely injured or killed. The newspaper account states that some of them were likely transients, “without home or friends,” known only by a single name like “Frenchy” or “Smithy” — their young lives cut suddenly, tragically short." (from (
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