The Kate Shelley Bridge is an engineering marvel, nearly three-quarters of a mile long. Fifteen-year-old Kate crawled across a wooden bridge in the same location to stop a train headed for a bridge down the line that had been washed away.
• Read the story of the controversy that erupted when a San Francisco dentist built a monument to Shelley in a Dubuque park.
• The Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad offers excursion trains over the famous bridge. Click here to visit their website.
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STORIES FROM IOWA'S PAST
The famous (and infamous) who have had a lasting impact on the state and the world
Kate Shelley's heroic walk to save train
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Fifteen-year-old Kate Shelley had kept a wary on on Honey Creek for most of the day, as storm clouds mounted in the west. The waterway was already swollen when rain began to fall again and young Kate, who had felt a special responsibility for her family after her father died in a railroad accident, knew that if flood waters rose again, the family might have to leave their small home in Moingona and seek out higher ground.
As lightning lit up the night sky, Kate could see that Honey Creek was already lapping against the stable on the edge of the family's property. She threw a cloak over her shoulders and dashed to the barn where she let the hogs and cattle out to fend for themselves.
When she returned, Kate helped her mother put her siblings to bed, but she felt obligated to stay up until the storm had passed. Though she was still, by many standards, a child, Kate felt an obligation to her mother followed the tragedy of the previous year. First, her father was killed and then her older brother drowned while swimming in the Des Moines River. Suddenly, Kate was the oldest child in the family. Her mother was suffering from bouts of depression and Kate did everyting she could to help.
Shortly after 11 p.m., Kate and her mother heard the rumble of a train crossing the big wooden bridge that spanned the Des Moines River Valley. Inside were four men with orders to "run to Boone and return to Moingona regardless of all trains". They passed the Shelley house and the rolled onto the bridge that crossed Honey Creek. As the train passed, Kate could hear the ringing of a bell on the train, and then came a dreadful noise.
Kate would later describe it as "the horrible crash and the fierce hissing of steam." The engine and four men plunged 25 feet into swirling waters, but from the Shelley home, over the din of the raging storm, it was the sudden silence that was most telling.
"They've gone down !" Kate said. And then she remembered that the midnight express was due to pass by from the west, stopping in Moingona before heading for the now-destroyed Honey Creek bridge and points west. She knew that someone had to get to Moingona to warn the train before it left the station.
Kate grabbed one of her father's old railroad lanterns and, ignoring her mother's pleadings, waded through the knee-deep water in the yard, scrambled up a bluff and loped east to the wrecked bridge. There, she saw two of the men hanging from a tree branch, pleading for help. The other two members of the crew had already been swept away.
There was nothing young Kate could do on her own, and she knew that the midnight express must be stopped, so she turned and ran for Moingona, about a mile away. She didn't worry about the distance, but she knew that her only clear route was over the long wooden bridge that stretched between her and the station.
Even in calm weather, crossing the bridge was dangerous, and to discourage adventurous youngsters, the railroad had removed some of the planking the would make the journey easier.but struck the lantern against a railroad tie, extinguishing the light. Using one of the steel rails to guide her way in pitch darkness, she moved forward, ignoring the cuts and bruises accumulating on her legs. Finally, she felt firm ground, stood up and ran down the track, the darkened lantern still in her hand.
When she got to te station she blurted out her story as people in the station looked at her with confusion. It was the last thing she remembered before fainting. Luckily, the station agent recognized her and realized the importance of the situation. Signals were raised to stop the midnight express and someone roused the town by blowing the whistle on an engine in the yard and, with Kate leading the way, headed to Honey Creek, where the two surviving members of the crew were rescued.
News of the dramatic rescue quickly criss-crossed the nation via the railroad's telegraph system and people from everywhere pored into Moingona to see the little girl who saved the train. They were followed by crowds of newspaper reporters who wanted to interview the shy 15-year-old. Kate became a national celebrity overnight: poets wrote sonnets about her feat, newspapers flashed headlines retelling her story, and politicians sang her praises. It was all too much for her and she was confined to bed rest for three months.
The incident instantly changed her life: the passengers of the train collected $200 for her, and she received medals from a group of Dubuque school children and from the state of Iowa, along withanother and with it an award of $200; the Chicago and North Western Railroad presented her with $100, a half barrel of flour, half a load of coal and a life-time pass. A gold watch and chain came from the Order of Railway Conductors. Letters poured into the Shelley cottage from all over the world. Some letters contained verses in her honor, some requested her autograph or picture, others a piece of her dress or a splinter from the wrecked bridge.
One of the passengers, Dr. Henry Cogswell, even erected a fountain in her honor in Dubuque, one of the oddest stories related to the episode. (See the accompanying story here.) Frances E. Willard, a well-known temperance leader, wrote to her friend, President Isabella W. Parks of Simpson College at Indianola and offered to contribute $25 toward providing advanced education for Kate. Parks helped raise additional funds for Kate to attend Simpson during the term of 1883-84. But for some reason college life didn't appeal to Shelley and she didn't come back the following term.
Fame continued to follow her, but she mostly ignored it. She knew she was needed at home and spent the next nine years doing farm chores and helping in the house while looking after her family. She eventually received her teaching certificate and taught school at a rural school near her home for the monthly salary of $35 a month.
In 1890, with money tight and a national financial crisis looming, the Shelley's were forced to mortgage their home for $500 at 10 percent interest. When a Chicago newspaper reported on the matter, the general public rallied behind the family and soon the money was raised to repay the loan with an additional $400 left over. The state of Iowa also responded, awarding her a grant of $5,000.
Perhaps because of the money situation, Kate finally accepted a two-decade old offer from the North Western railroad in 1903 to become station agent at Moingona. Twice each day she walked between her home and the station on foot along the same route she traveled on that fateful night in 1881, crossing the same bridge which in 1900 was replaced by a new iron bridge over the Des Moines River.
Trains continued to pass over the old route over Honey Creek approaching the Des Moines River, but a new route was laid out for the main line a few miles north. When Kate was at home train crews would slow down their trains and sometimes even stop to pay their respects to her. The tracks past her home were now a branch line and such pauses did not hold up main-line traffic.
Kate never married and remained committed to her work until retiring shortly before here death in 1912. At the time of her funeral hundreds of friends and acquaintances paid her homage and the railroad sent a special train to her home as a convenience for the family and her friends.
Today, the track past the Shelley homestead is gone. The route became a branch line in 1900 and was disbanded in 1933. But thousands of train enthusiasts still visit the bridge and a museum in Moingona each year.
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