Ashtabula Horror - Train Wreck Disaster
Ashtabula, Ohio
"The Ashtabula Horror" so traumatized this city that three memorials commemorate it: a plaque near the crash scene, an obelisk in the cemetery, and an audio memorial outside of the hospital.
It happened on December 29, 1876, when the Ashtabula Creek Bridge collapsed into a 70-foot-deep gorge.
In a blizzard.
With a train on top of it.
Ninety-two of its 159 passengers and crew were killed. As if the crash weren't bad enough, the passenger cars' stoves caught fire and incinerated many of the survivors.
Then robbers invaded the flaming wreck and murdered several more.
This disaster was so bad that it reportedly killed railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt from shock. The bridge designer later committed suicide. The railroad's chief engineer was murdered and it was made to look like a suicide. Ashtabula became a shunned town, its growth stunted, with homeowners and businesses bypassing it in favor of Cleveland.
Overall, not much to commemorate, but Ashtabula makes the best of what it has.
The train wreck historical marker used to be down by the railroad tracks, just west of the crash scene, but it's been moved north to the grounds of the Ashtabula County Medical Center. It notes that The Ashtabula Horror "is listed as one of the world's ten worst technology disasters in the past 375 years."