The trip to Jefferson City was about two-thirds complete when, shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon, the train approached a wooden bridge over the Gasconade River at the present-day town of Gasconade. The bridge was not yet complete, but it was supported by a temporary trestle that was thought safe. However, as the train started across the bridge, the structure gave way, precipitating the front locomotive and ten of the passenger cars into the river. The bridge was about thirty feet above the river, and the water that the train cars plunged into was as much as twenty feet deep.
The rear locomotive and one of the passenger cars became disengaged from the rest of the train and were thus saved. In addition, some of the passengers had gotten out of their respective cars before the train started across the bridge in order to inspect the bridge and to observe the crossing. They, too, were saved, unless they happened to be on the bridge as the train started across it. Still, over thirty people were killed in the disaster, and another 100 or more were injured.
The rear locomotive raced back the way it had come to give an alarm, but details about the disaster were slow to reach the cities. As information about the tragedy trickled into St. Louis over the next couple of days, the entire city was thrown into "a dark time of distress."
A reporter for a Jefferson City newspaper reached the Gasconade bridge on Saturday morning almost 48 hours after the disaster. He described the scene as "such a heap of ruin as few mortals ever before gazed upon."
The Gasconade tragedy was the first major bridge collapse in American history with large-scale casualties.
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