The Tehachapi Wreck Of 1883
Back in January 1883, high up at the Tehachapi Summit north of Lancaster, California, at 2 in the morning, the Atlantic Express — going from Oakland to L.A. — sat idling next to the little station for a quick break. Seven cars long, two steam engines still warm. Most passengers were asleep.
A retired railroad man named G.H. McKenzie was asleep in the smoking car when a little girl on the train noticed the cars starting to roll backward. She woke him up.
Then he felt it.
The train was moving. Backward. Slowly at first… but picking up speed. And there were no engines attached.
McKenzie realized in that split second: something had gone terribly wrong.
He threw down his coffee, the cup shattering on the platform.
“Brakes! The brakes!” he shouted as he ran through the smoking car. Most of the passengers inside were Chinese laborers who didn’t understand what he was yelling. He kept moving, rushing forward through the train, yelling warnings as the cars picked up speed rolling backward down the mountain.
He reached the coach and called for help. He was joined by another railroad man, Stephen Coffyn. Together they were able to apply the brakes on the coach and smoking cars.
As the two men were working on the brakes, the runaway train was in freefall going seventy miles an hour.
There was a sharp jolt as the train went around a curve. The two sleepers, mail, baggage, and express cars broke loose and left the track.
When the five cars left the track they derailed to the right. The first car struck the rocks at the beginning of the cut and they all rolled down a seventy-five foot embankment, coming to rest on their sides below the track. The heating stoves had overturned with the violent shaking of the cars so that the cars were already on fire when they settled at the base of the embankment. All five cars of the train were burning in the dark four miles from Tehachapi.
The two rear cars were stopped a mile and a half on down the line — safe and sound thanks to the efforts of those two men and that little girl who woke McKenzie up just in time.
This was a freak accident… but of course, nothing is ever as it seems. There had to be a coverup.
Let’s Back Up a Little
The Atlantic Express — Southern Pacific Train No. 19 — had left Oakland Pier the morning before, on Friday January 19, 1883. It was the regular southbound run headed for Los Angeles.
On board were mail, baggage, express cargo, and a mix of passengers trying to sleep through the night.
But two of them stood out.
Former California Governor John G. Downey and his wife Maria were in the first sleeping car.
Maria had always been terrified of trains. She hated the noise, the speed, the way they rattled and swayed. For years she had refused to ride them. The Downeys usually took the steamer up the coast instead — slower, but it felt safer to her.
This time was different.
Downey had a rush business meeting in Sacramento he couldn’t miss. He talked his wife into making the train trip north just this once. Business completed in Sacramento and San Francisco, they were now on their way back home to Los Angeles.
So Maria agreed to the return trip.
They boarded in San Francisco, took the ferry across to Oakland Pier, and settled into their compartment in the first sleeping car.
As the train steamed south through the San Joaquin Valley that day, everything felt normal. But by the time darkness fell and the train started climbing the Tehachapi Grade, Maria was already uneasy.
They had no idea that by two o’clock the next morning, that decision would change everything.
The Stop at the Summit
The train reached the top of the grade and pulled into the little station at Tehachapi Summit right around 2 a.m. It was a stormy night with a strong wind howling across the mountains.
The crew made a routine stop. The engines needed coal and water. The helper engine had to be turned around on the turntable for the trip back down the grade. So the two engines were detached.
The front brakeman set the new Westinghouse air brakes. But no one set the hand brakes — even though the company rules said you had to when the engines were taken off on a hill like this.
Conductor A.J. Reed stepped inside the station to sign the register and check for any orders. Rear brakeman W.H. Patton walked a woman passenger over to the depot to ask about a hotel in town. The wind blew out his lantern, so he had to go back inside to relight it.
For a few minutes, no one stayed with the train.
The air brakes — still a fairly new invention — slowly started to leak pressure in the freezing cold. The strong wind did the rest.
How the Train Was Set Up (and What Went Wrong)
Let me show you exactly how this train was set up.
The Atlantic Express was seven cars long:
Front to back — mail car, baggage car, express car, first sleeping car (that’s where the Downeys were), second sleeping car, smoking car, and the rear coach.
The train was sitting on a steep grade at the summit.
When the brakes leaked and the wind pushed, the whole thing started rolling backward down this grade.
McKenzie and Coffyn got to the very last two cars — the smoking car and the coach at the rear — and they managed to set the hand brakes.
Those two cars slowed down and stopped right there, about a mile and a half down the line.
But the front five cars had too much momentum. They broke loose, kept rolling backward down the same track, hit a sharp curve at around seventy miles an hour… and then they left the rails. They derailed hard to the right, slid off the track, and plunged seventy-five feet down the embankment into the ravine below.
All five cars ended up on their sides… and the heating stoves flipped over and set the whole mess on fire.
The Human Cost
Inside the first sleeping car, everything exploded into chaos.
Governor Downey woke up being pulled from the wreckage through a broken window. Porter Ashe, his wife, their maid Minnie Peterson, and another passenger named Howard Tilton dragged him out. Downey had bad bruises on his left side and three broken ribs. He didn’t remember the crash itself.
But Maria was pinned in the twisted metal.
The fire was already raging. The heating stoves had flipped over and spilled hot coals everywhere. The wooden cars were burning fast. Rescuers could hear Maria’s cries for help… but the flames were too hot and too quick. They couldn’t reach her.
She died right there in the wreckage — the very thing she had feared most about trains.
Mrs. John F. Cassell died the same way in the next compartment. Major Charles H. Larrabee was pulled out alive but died later from his injuries. The express messenger, both porters, and several others never made it out. The two discharged soldiers, Thomas Keegan and Fernando Brumford, heading home to Arizona, also perished in the flames.
Fifteen people died that night. Many of the bodies were burned so badly that families had to identify them by jewelry, scraps of clothing, and travel records. In the confusion, some coffins even got mixed up with boxes of beef that had been in the express car.
The Cover-Up
Here’s where the story gets really shady.
The Southern Pacific Railroad did not want any blame for what had just happened. So right away they started spinning a different story.
They told the newspapers that two strangers or hoboes had jumped on the unattended train at the summit and released the brakes as part of a robbery attempt. One major paper, the Record-Union in Sacramento, ran a big headline on January 26th that said “Proofs that the Disaster was Caused by Robbers.” It sounded official. A lot of people read it and believed the railroad was innocent.
But watch this — that story fell apart fast.
The two men turned out to be Thomas Keegan and Fernando Brumford — honorably discharged soldiers who had paid tickets and were simply heading home to Arizona from the Presidio in San Francisco. There was no robbery. There was no gold or valuable cargo on the train that night.
It was the railroad trying to cover their own mistakes: no hand brakes set, leaky air brakes in the cold, and leaving the whole train sitting alone on a steep grade.
On January 22nd — just two days after the wreck — Conductor A.J. Reed and Brakeman W.H. Patton were arrested for manslaughter and taken to Bakersfield.
Here’s how long their “trial” lasted.
The Southern Pacific posted bail for both men in just one hour — two thousand four hundred dollars each. Then the whole case quietly disappeared.
No trial.
No witnesses called.
No real investigation.
No punishment.
The powerful railroad protected its own people, and the whole thing was swept away like it never happened.
But the Human Cost Didn’t Disappear
Help took too long to arrive. The conductor at the summit refused to send a rescue train without orders from headquarters. That added more than an hour of delay. Injured survivors, including the governor, had to ride back on open flat cars in the freezing wind with almost nothing to cover them.
When Governor Downey was finally interviewed by reporters on the way back to Los Angeles, he said he remembered nothing until they helped him to the ground from the overturned car.
He was crushed over losing his beautiful wife.
He felt terrible guilt that he had talked her into the train trip against her deep fears.
He went into seclusion for a long time. Friends said the sadness never really left him. Some believed it contributed to struggles with alcohol in the years that followed. He took a three-year trip around the world trying to heal. He remarried in 1888, but he was never the same man. He died in 1894.
The body identification added even more heartbreak. Maria’s remains were burned so badly that they were first mixed up with Mrs. Cassell’s body and sent to the wrong city. They had to use jewelry and dental details to sort it out. Other families faced the same painful confusion.
A Quiet Reminder
The wreck remains Tehachapi’s worst transportation disaster to this day.
The Southern Pacific line through the pass is still in use today — freight trains only now, with dozens running every single day on the same 1876 alignment, including the famous Tehachapi Loop.
One of Maria Downey’s elaborate gowns survived the fire. It is kept today in the Tehachapi Museum — a quiet reminder of the woman who never wanted to ride that train.
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