A Jesse James trick on the
old SP
BY Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune
Finally free of the twists
and turns of the Cow Creek Canyon, just five miles south of Riddle Station, the
Southern Pacific “Overland” was running full throttle with straight track
ahead.
At 10:10 p.m., July 1, 1895,
the moon was hidden behind canyon walls, its soft light no match for the
headlight beam on the northbound train flickering across the steel rails.
There was a thud, a flash and
a loud explosion. Engineer Jasper Waite reached for the airbrakes, but too
late. Two more
blasts rocked the train. Its wheels screeched to a stop. Its
front truck twisted and scraping along the rails.
 |
| Train Robbery |
When Waite tried to leave the
cab, there was a pistol pointed at his nose. The bandit wore a white flour sack
over his head, with holes cut out for eyes, nose and mouth. Ordered to keep
their hands stretched above their heads, Waite and fireman Everett Gray jumped
down.
“I saw three men,” Waite
later testified. “He marched us on around to the express car and told messenger
Donahue to throw up his hands. I helped the robber up into the car as he told
me to do.”
In the smoking car, a
foolishly curious young passenger put his head out the window and instantly
felt the barrel of a pistol pressed against his forehead. In the words of a
newspaper report, the young man heard “the magic words:”
“You d—d son of a b—, keep
your head inside!”
Two of the gang walked beside
the train, occasionally firing their pistols and tossing lit dynamite sticks
into nearby fields.
The first masked man pushed the captured engineer and
fireman through the express and mail cars, grabbing whatever he found valuable.
Then, accompanied by the
hostage train crew, the bandit made a slow walk through the passenger and
sleeper cars, relieving trembling passengers of their valuables.
“The very audacity of the
deed by which several hundred men were temporarily deprived of their manhood
and their
valuables,” wrote an Oregonian reporter, “stamped the perpetrator as
a cool, nervy rascal; a real, live, dime-novel hero, who could give pointers to
Jesse James.”
A headline in the Salem
Capital Journal called this “Daring Robbery” a “Jesse James Trick.”
An hour after it began, the
robbery was over. The first bandit warned Waite not to move the train for
another hour and, before he left, he shot out the locomotive’s headlight.
With a damaged front truck on
the engine, it took nearly three hours to travel the five miles to Riddle.
There the crew turned the locomotive around and backed the entire 28 miles to
Roseburg, where the only replacement locomotive was available.
The Southern Pacific Company
offered a $3,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the robbers, a reward
that inspired detective George Quinn to begin a search for evidence that within
three days led to the arrests of Albert and James Pool and their cousin, John
Case.
The robbers were handcuffed
and taken to Portland for a trial that made headlines across the country.
Next week, the trial — with
overwhelming evidence of guilt presented to a jury — yet, also evidence that
may be suspect, tainted and very worrisome to a highly respected Oregon judge.
Writer Bill Miller is the
author of “History Snoopin’,”a collection of his previous history columns and
stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.
http://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/a-jesse-james-trick-on-the-old-sp
