Moffat Tunnel Deaths

Moffat Tunnel Deaths: In Memoriam of the 55 Lives Lost Building Colorado’s Historic 6.2-Mile Tunnel through the Continental Divide

Please note that this page and the underlying research on Moffat Tunnel deaths represent ongoing scholarly work. Revisions are made regularly as new information becomes available, and the data presented here should be considered provisional, for now. Finalized analysis and conclusions are anticipated to require several more years of study and verification.

The information on this page was last updated Tuesday, February 10, 2026.

This comprehensive memorial is the result of original, ongoing research. Each name added to this list has been carefully vetted through primary sources and corroborated across multiple records, in many cases across the United States. Because much of this information has never before been compiled or published in a single location, we ask that any reuse or citation of this work properly credit the researchers (B. Travis Wright and Kate Wright of Preserve Rollins Pass) and our project. Attribution ensures the integrity of the record and honors the effort that has gone into reconstructing these long-overlooked histories.

In the lead-up to the 100th anniversary of the Moffat Tunnel’s completion in February 2028, we are working to restore the names of the men who lost their lives during its construction. This evolving memorial grows as research confirms individuals, ensuring that by the centennial their sacrifices will no longer be buried beneath time or rock. This is not just a historical exercise—it is a commitment to honoring the workers whose stories were left out of the spotlight for too long. As new documentation and firsthand accounts come to light, this evolving record will reflect both remembrance and recognition.

To our knowledge, there is no plaque, no single list, no formal remembrance for the men who died building the Moffat Tunnel—an absence that speaks volumes. It is a striking omission, especially given that the tunnel is not merely a passage through the Continental Divide; it is, in many ways, a sepulcher of sacrifice. That such a monumental achievement lacks a public accounting of its human cost is both sobering and unjust. These were not nameless laborers lost to time—they were fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands whose lives were spent driving progress forward. This effort seeks to correct that silence.

The most commonly cited number of lives lost during the construction of the Moffat Tunnel is 28. But through years of research—cross-referencing historic newspapers, cemetery records, and family accounts—we know the true number is higher. Some deaths were misreported or unacknowledged, leaving gaps in the official record. Names and details have not only been lost over time—they’ve often drifted. In the absence of a centralized record, misinformation took root and repeated itself. For instance, Rade Lekich was the first documented fatality in newspapers, killed in May 1924. Yet by December of that same year, newspapers began reporting Harvey Lee Gilson as the first death. Then, in February 1927, articles claimed that a man named L.E. Trick was the tunnel’s first casualty—despite details that identically match Lekich’s death. It appears the name may have been passed along verbally, with “L.E. Trick” possibly originating from a misheard or misremembered phonetic pronunciation of “Lekich” or, more likely “Lekić.” This kind of confusion underscores why original source material and rigorous citation are essential. Every name we share has been carefully traced, corroborated, and contextualized to restore accuracy and dignity to the historical record.

If your family has a relative who died while working on the tunnel but was never formally recognized, we welcome your insight. Names, photos, letters, or memories could help us honor those whose stories were lost along the way. We’re working to correct the record with dignity and historical accuracy—especially as the 100th anniversary of the tunnel’s opening approaches on Saturday, February 26, 2028.

METHODOLOGY: HOW WE COUNT THE LIVES LOST BUILDING THE MOFFAT TUNNEL

When we remember the men who built the Moffat Tunnel between 1923 and 1928, we also recognize those who never made it home.

Yet even a century later, there is no definitive list of how many workers died during construction. Records from the time were often incomplete or inconsistent, and there was no modern system like OSHA to formally investigate or track workplace deaths. To respectfully and transparently honor those who died, we use a structured approach grounded in both historical documentation and contemporary health standards.

We’ve categorized each case based on available historical evidence and modern occupational health understanding to ensure transparency and accuracy. First, we include confirmed fatalities—these are workers who were killed on-site in the tunnel or who died shortly afterward as the direct result of a documented accident. We also include documented work-related deaths, which account for workers who sustained injuries inside the tunnel but died later in hospitals or at home; in each of these cases, the connection to tunnel work is clear and well-recorded.

We further include a third category: probable occupational illnesses. These are young, otherwise healthy workers who died of pneumonia or similar conditions following extended exposure to the tunnel’s harsh environment—cold, wet, high altitude, subpar ventilation, and physically exhausting. While these deaths may not have been officially recorded as work-related at the time, they would today likely meet the standards for occupational illness under modern health and safety guidelines. As such, they are included in our total, with clear labeling and explanation.

In rare cases where contemporaneous sources document catastrophic, likely-fatal injuries with an explicit prognosis of death, and no subsequent record of survival or recovery has been found after a reasonable search window, we classify the case as Probable and include it in the total, noting both the evidentiary gap and the specific records sought. This prevents a structural undercount caused by 1920s record gaps, while our labeling ensures immediate correction if contrary documentation emerges.

Finally, we acknowledge a set of unconfirmed or speculative cases—deaths where the connection to tunnel work is based on oral history, family memory, or vague reporting, but where no reliable timeline or documentation exists. These individuals are not included in the official total, but we recognize their stories as part of the broader legacy of the Moffat Tunnel and honor them accordingly.

WHY ILLNESSES ARE COUNTED

The scale and risk of Moffat Tunnel construction required continuous on-site medical care at both portals. Contemporary records identify Dr. R. J. McDonald, stationed at the West Portal, and Dr. Ray Sunderland, serving the East Portal. Their presence also helps explain why this record includes deaths from pneumonia and related illnesses. Although such deaths were not caused by blasting or rockfall, they were not incidental. In the conditions under which tunnel crews lived and worked, respiratory disease was an occupational hazard.

Contemporary engineers understood the risk well enough to design explicit countermeasures. As Clifford Allen Betts recorded in Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Paper No. 1771, the tunnel camps relied on a centralized laundry—“the central wash house, there being no tubs in camp”—equipped with stationary tubs, shower baths, toilets, and ample hot water. More telling still, and stated without ambiguity, “as a preventive of pneumonia, which at that altitude is pernicious,” purpose-built change houses were constructed at each portal so that men coming off shift could transition from the tunnel into sheltered space, shower, and change into dry clothing before prolonged exposure to the cold outside. Wet garments were clipped to wire-rope hoists and raised overhead to dry, with each line secured inside the owner’s locker—an operational detail that underscores both the routine nature of saturation and the deliberate attempt to interrupt repeated cycles of cold, dampness, and exhaustion. This was not incidental camp convenience. It was infrastructure explicitly justified, in the engineer’s own words, as a defense against pneumonia—an acknowledgment that respiratory illness was an anticipated and persistent occupational hazard of tunnel work at altitude.

The death record bears this out. Fatal pneumonia and related illnesses appear throughout the construction period and across seasons: Pumphrey in February 1924; Bonham in September 1924; Schaaf in December 1924; Markham in May 1925; Nicholls in August 1925; Billings in December 1926; Engleman in April 1927; Davis later that same month; and Watt in March 1928, just weeks after completion. The distribution is important: these deaths did not cluster solely in the depths of winter, nor did they disappear during summer months. Instead, they recur whenever prolonged exposure, exhaustion, damp clothing, and compromised air converged—precisely the conditions Betts’ preventive infrastructure was designed, and often struggled, to mitigate.

While Moffat Tunnel construction crews did implement ventilation systems to manage air quality, those efforts were often overwhelmed by the realities of blasting, fine dust, high altitude, and the immense scale of the bore. By the standards of the 1920s, ventilation was present—but by today’s occupational health expectations, the air would be deemed insufficient for sustained human labor. Combined with cold, wet, and damp conditions and grueling shifts, even modest respiratory infections could—and did—prove fatal, including for otherwise healthy young men, some just 20 years old. While some death records list pneumonia as the cause, it’s likely that at least some of these cases were misdiagnosed respiratory conditions related to extreme dust exposure—such as acute silicosis or pneumonitis from inhaled particulates. Today, these would be classified as occupational lung diseases, not simply infections, and would underscore the systemic respiratory hazards workers faced inside the Moffat Tunnel. Period newspaper accounts frequently note that pneumonia, believed to have been contracted while working at the Moffat Tunnel, was the cause of death for not only laborers, but also superintendents and shift bosses. Far from being protected by their supervisory roles, these individuals often spent extended, continuous hours inside the tunnel overseeing operations, increasing their exposure to cold, damp, and dust-laden air. Their deaths illustrate how pervasive and inescapable the environmental hazards were—affecting workers across all levels of responsibility.

Today, such conditions would be flagged as severe occupational hazards. Pneumonia caused by prolonged cold exposure, physical exhaustion, and unventilated air is widely recognized under modern standards as a work-related illness—the result of environmental neglect, not bad luck. In other words, if these men had been working anywhere else, they likely would have lived.

Excluding their deaths would be to overlook not just individual stories, but systemic risk. Including them restores part of what was erased by silence, incomplete recordkeeping, and the limitations of early 20th-century public health. At the Moffat Tunnel, fatal pneumonia played the role that yellow fever and malaria did at the Panama Canal—an environmental killer that must be counted; excluding pneumonia from the tally would misstate the risks workers actually faced.

These men died because of the tunnel. They deserve to be counted.

A NOTE ON EXCLUSIONS

This record documents deaths directly tied to life and work on the Moffat Tunnel project, encompassing both direct accidents and indirect “community deaths” that arose within the tunnel camps. Deaths that could just as plausibly have occurred anywhere, such as fatalities from “bad bootleg” alcohol (poisoning during Prohibition) [Patrick Flynn, March 1925; Horace E. Dudley, October 1925] or suicide from private marital difficulties [Francis R. Baxter, October 1926] are excluded. If new information shows that any listed death does not meet this test, the name will be respectfully removed. The goal is not to inflate numbers, but to preserve an accurate account of the human toll directly associated with the tunnel enterprise.

We have also narrowed the scope of applicable deaths to men directly associated with the tunnel project, excluding the tragic deaths of children and wives from unrelated causes. (We have also excluded the death of Earl L. Frink, age twelve, who was killed when a small tunnel in his backyard of his Denver residence collapsed. Although his father worked at East Portal, this incident was unrelated to the Moffat Tunnel project. Additionally, we have excluded the death of Merrell Guy Green—a sixth-grader, age fourteen—who was experiencing heart attacks and valvular heart trouble. His parents were trying to get him from Craig, Colorado to Brewster, Kansas. He “rested fairly well while the train was in motion, but had great difficulty in breathing when it stopped. At West Portal a snow plow was off the track, and a long delay followed, during which time the sick boy experienced more and more difficulty in breathing, until at last he passed away, fully conscious to the end.”)

A SPECIAL THANK YOU AND CALL TO ACTION

This memorial has grown because of the generosity of families who have shared stories, photographs, and hard-won fragments of history about their loved ones. Every contribution brings us closer to a complete record, ensuring that the men of the Moffat Tunnel are remembered not as anonymous laborers, but as grandfathers, fathers, uncles, and family friends. If you have information, documents, or family recollections connected to the tunnel, we invite you to reach out. Your knowledge may be the missing piece that helps us honor these men fully, as we approach the centennial of the Moffat Tunnel in 2028.

Special thanks to the families and researchers who have contributed so far, including: Susan Stein (for the family of Warren Weaver Wilson), Verna Decker Whaley (for the family of Charley Decker), Jan Stumbo (sexton of the cemetery where James Clinton Platter is buried), Becki (Riverside Cemetery Block 14 expert), and Brooke Ritter (Crown Hill Cemetery in Wheat Ridge, Colorado).

IN MEMORIAM: MOFFAT TUNNEL DEATHS

While our original intent was to wait until the centennial of the Moffat Tunnel’s construction to publish this list—allowing it to grow through deliberate, methodical research—an increasing number of relatives have been reaching out to us. To honor those connected to the Moffat Tunnel and safeguard the historical record, we are releasing provisional information now (in late summer 2025), well ahead of the 100th anniversary. Doing so provides ample time for families, researchers, and the public to review the list, share additional details, and help ensure that every name and story is recorded accurately for the centennial. This list will continue to be refined, with more names and information added as research progresses and new contributions emerge.

This evolving record honors those who lost their lives connected to construction of the Moffat Tunnel (1923–1928). Each entry maps the event to BLS/MSHA-style categories (e.g., fall of ground, struck-by equipment, explosion, electrocution, asphyxiation, transportation, overexertion/physiologic, or violence) and records the manner separately (accident, homicide, suicide, natural, or undetermined). Historic phrasing—such as “fall of rock”—is retained in quotes, with the modern term in brackets. Where an earlier job injury preceded a later death, we state the causal link and cite the evidence, so the count reflects the full risk workers faced, not just on-site fatalities. Note on modern statistics: The BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) counts traumatic injuries and generally excludes illness-related deaths unless precipitated by an injury event. This memorial includes occupational illnesses to reflect the full risk workers faced, consistent with death-certificate practice distinguishing manner from medical cause.

Note: Names shown in bold have been fully verified through multiple independent sources, confirming not just the individual’s identity but also the date and circumstances of death. Names not yet in bold have been documented in at least one credible source; however, further corroboration is still needed to confirm additional details. This approach reflects both our commitment to accuracy and the reality that, in some cases, full confirmation may never be possible. By distinguishing levels of verification, we aim to honor every individual while transparently acknowledging the limitations of the historical record. Please note that the death numbers below are provisional and may shift forward or backward as additional deaths are validated. Abbreviations used include NLT, meaning “no later than,” and NET, meaning “no earlier than.”

#1 | 1924 | Jonas Wilson Pumphrey, Jr.

• Age: 58
• Birth: Wednesday, January 24, 1866 in Platte County, Missouri
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer (electric motor driver in the tunnel)
• Date of Death: Monday, February 25, 1924
• Mechanism (event): exposure/respiratory
• Medical Cause: pneumonia
• Manner: natural (occupational illness)
• Burial: Nederland Cemetery, Nederland, Colorado.
• Headstone: Monument located and confirmed.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 35124013
• Other Information: We believe this to be the first death related to the Moffat Tunnel project, however, research is still ongoing. Pumphrey’s family moved from Erie to Nederland in 1922. Jonas left behind his wife, Rose, daughter Louise (16), a son, Jonas Wilson (16), and daughter Virginia (8). Due to the “bad condition of the road between Nederland and East Portal, owing to snowdrifts, considerable difficulty was experienced by friends of the deceased and of Mrs. Rose Pumphrey… in getting the remains to Nederland.” A separate article mentioned that “Mrs. J.H. Robinson received word on Monday of the death of her brother, J.W. Pumphrey” and the article mentions “the high altitude was a contributing factor to the fatal disease.” Pumphrey was born in Platt County, Missouri on January 24, 1866. He was a “devout member of the Baptist church and of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, being a member of the LaSalle lodge.” Pumphrey is buried in Nederland, alongside Rose.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Jonas Wilson Pumphrey, Jr., please let us know.

#2 | 1924 | Lee Rae Thurber

• Age: 21
• Birth: Friday, May 9, 1902
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Tuesday, April 22, 1924
• Mechanism (event): unknown
• Medical Cause: unknown
• Manner: undetermined
• Burial: Richfield City Cemetery, Richfield, Utah | A.33.12.02
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 113540
• Other Information: Lee Rae Thurber was a young laborer whose death occurred on April 22, 1924, during the early construction period of the Moffat Tunnel. Though Utah and Idaho newspapers emphasized his family’s residence in Manard, Idaho, none of them reported where he died. The only contemporaneous source that identifies his final place of residence—and therefore his place of death—is the Yeager Mortuary notice published in the Rocky Mountain News on April 24, 1924, stating that he was “late of West Portal, Colo.” That designation carries legal weight: it reflects what was recorded on the mortuary’s intake documents when the body was transferred to their custody. His remains were then shipped by rail for burial in Richfield, Utah. Thurber’s death is part of the Moffat Tunnel’s construction-era toll because the only authoritative document naming his location at the time of death is the Denver mortuary notice—placing him at West Portal during active tunnel construction in April 1924. Utah papers offered only familial background (“residing at Manard, Idaho”) but did not claim he died there. Bodies from Idaho did not pass through Denver mortuaries, whereas bodies from West Portal routinely did. The timeline of his death (Tuesday, April 22) and the Denver mortuary notice (Thursday, April 24) also matches the known transportation interval from the West Portal settlement to Denver. When the Richfield Reaper later described his parents and widow boarding the train “in Manard” with the body, that reflected where the family lived—not where he died. Together, the evidence unambiguously situates his death within the Moffat Tunnel construction environment. Born on May 9, 1902, in Richfield, Utah, Thurber was the son of Joseph H. and Anna C. Thurber. The family, long rooted in Richfield, later moved to Manard, Idaho more than fifteen years before his death. Newspaper accounts from the Richfield Reaper and the Salt Lake Tribune describe him as well liked, with strong community ties. He was an ex-serviceman, and members of the American Legion’s Jensen-Colby Post served as pallbearers during his funeral. Utah newspapers reported that Thurber’s body arrived in Richfield on Friday night after his parents and widow met the train at Manard. Funeral services were held in the First Ward Chapel and were attended by a large crowd. None of the Utah coverage addressed cause of death, circumstances, or site—an omission typical for out-of-state labor deaths communicated by telegram. The lack of any Idaho death notice, absence of an Idaho mortuary, and the Denver mortuary’s explicit “late of West Portal” listing together confirm that his death occurred in Colorado.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Lee Ray Thurber
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Lee Rae Thurber, please let us know.

#3 | 1924 | Juan Valquez

• Age: unknown
• Townsite Association: N/A
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer, Moffat Road section
• Date of Death: late April 1924 (reported May 2, 1924)
• Mechanism (event): electrocution from contact with snow-buried 40,000-volt transmission line above East Portal
• Medical Cause: electrical burns/electrocution
• Manner: accident
• Burial: unknown
• Headstone: unknown
• Find A Grave Memorial: N/A
• Other Information: Valquez, identified as a laborer with the Moffat Road section force on the western slope, attempted to cross the mountains carrying a satchel on a stick over his shoulder. In deep snow, the satchel contacted the energized line strung across the Divide to power tunnel compressors. His death was reported in the Routt County Sentinel (May 2, 1924) and formally documented in Clifford Allen Betts’ completion paper, Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, 1931, 95(1): 334–371 (Paper No. 1771). Betts discussed the electrocution alongside technical challenges of maintaining the inter-portal line, treating it as part of the tunnel’s hazards. Although Valquez may not have been on tunnel payroll, the high-tension line existed solely for tunnel operations; but for the project, the hazard would not have been there. Modern OSHA standards would classify such a case as project-caused regardless of duty status. For that reason, Valquez’s death is recorded here as a project-related fatality tied to tunnel infrastructure.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Juan Valquez, please let us know.

#4 | 1924 | Rade (Mike) Lekich

• Age: 38
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): trackman
• Date of Death: Thursday, May 22, 1924
• Mechanism (event): transportation/struck by rail equipment (run over by switch cars within the tunnel)
• Medical Cause: blunt trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 14, Lot 10, Section 23, presumably no headstone/unmarked
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 285710055
• Other Information: Rade Lekich, a Serbian laborer living at 1902 Arapahoe Street in Denver, had been employed for about four months as a trackman at the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel when he was killed at 9:30pm. According to information the police received from Dr. Sutherland, the tunnel’s physician, Lekich was run over by a switch car in the East Portal. A different understanding emerged from his friend I. M. Jovanovich, who said that during a recent visit Lekich had described the kind of work he was doing and that he believed Lekich was crushed by a falling rock. Lekich had no relatives in the United States and relied on Mr. and Mrs. I. M. Jovanovich, fellow Serbians at the same Denver address, as his only support network. About ten days before his death, when leaving Denver to return to the tunnel, he told them: “I have no other friends in this country. If anything happens to me, I know you will take care of me.” When a policeman notified the Jovanoviches at 10pm the night of the accident, no arrangements had been made for the care of Lekich’s body. Though recovering from pneumonia, Jovanovich resolved to go to the tunnel commissioners the next day to take responsibility for the funeral, saying: “We must take care of our friend… He has no one else.”
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): L.E. Trick. Real name was likely Rade Lekić (Anglicized as: Lekich)
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Rade (Mike) Lekich, please let us know.

#5 | 1924 | D. H. Davis

• Age: 44-45
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: NLT Saturday, September 13, 1924
• Mechanism (event): unknown
• Medical Cause: unknown
• Manner: undetermined
• Burial: Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 14, Lot 10, Section 27, no headstone/unmarked
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 154139808
• Other Information: D. H. Davis first appears in the surviving record on September 13, 1924, when a notice described him as “late of West Portal, Colo.,” identified him as a member of the Knights of Pythias lodge in Madrid, New Mexico, and stated that his remains would be received by the Yeager Mortuary in Denver. A second notice the following day confirmed that the mortuary had assumed custody of the body and would publish a subsequent funeral announcement—an announcement that has not been located in extant newspapers. No contemporary obituary, accident report, or coroner’s filing has yet surfaced to explain the circumstances of his death or the precise conditions under which it occurred. Probate records, however, resolve a key ambiguity left by the press. The inventory of Davis’ estate lists four unpaid paychecks from Hitchcock & Tinkler, Inc., each identified by number and date: Check No. 10216, dated August 5, 1924, for $48.00; Check No. 10857, dated August 20, 1924, for $43.50; Check No. 11510, dated September 5, 1924, for $52.50; and Check No. 12449, dated September 20, 1924, for $17.06. All were drawn on the First National Bank of Denver and together total $161.06, including a final paycheck dated September 20, 1924, consistent with delayed or administrative wage settlement following his death. The inventory also records $3.00 in cash, a sum likely on his person at the time of death and subsequently transferred to the mortuary for safekeeping. Taken together, these documents place Davis firmly within the Hitchcock & Tinkler tunnel workforce at West Portal in the weeks immediately preceding his death, though the probate file does not specify his job classification. They also illustrate how some men associated with the Moffat Tunnel are known today only through thin administrative traces—payroll instruments, mortuary-held funds, and brief notices—requiring their histories to be reconstructed from fragments rather than preserved in full narrative form.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about D. H. Davis, please let us know.

#6 | 1924 | Victor William Bonham

• Age: 23
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: NLT Sunday, September 21, 1924
• Mechanism (event): exposure/respiratory
• Medical Cause: pneumonia
• Manner: natural (occupational illness)
• Burial: Colusa Community Cemetery, Colusa, California
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 60207468
• Other Information: Victor Bonham enters the documentary record through a tightly clustered series of newspaper notices published between September 21 and September 30, 1924. Together, these notices establish a consistent account of his death and disposition. Bonham is identified as a twenty-three-year-old former Colusa resident, “late of West Portal, Colo.,” who had left California about a month earlier to travel to Colorado. While at or near West Portal, he developed pneumonia and died after an illness uniformly described as lasting only two days. Word of his death was received from Denver, where the Yeager Mortuary handled the remains and arranged their return to Colusa. Funeral services were held at the J. D. McNary & Son chapel, and burial took place in the Colusa Cemetery, near the grave of his sister, Alta Vivian Bonham, who had died at age twenty-one during the influenza epidemic several years earlier. Family context further sharpens the picture. Bonham’s brothers—Clarance Leonard Bonham, who lived to age seventy-six, and Hiram Dyton Bonham, who lived to age ninety—both reached advanced age, suggesting no evident pattern of familial frailty or inherited vulnerability. Against that backdrop, Victor Bonham’s death appears less reflective of weakness than of circumstance. The record therefore supports a pattern consistent with sudden illness rather than prolonged infirmity: Bonham appears to have been present in Colorado for several weeks before becoming abruptly ill. At the same time, no obituary, employment record, accident report, or coroner’s account has yet been located to clarify the nature of his work or the reason for his presence at West Portal. He remains a documented but uncontextualized figure within the Moffat Tunnel landscape—known through the administrative traces of death, but not yet through any surviving record of labor or incident.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Donham
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Victor William Bonham, please let us know.

#7 | 1924 | Ivor Williams

• Age: 37
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: NLT Thursday, October 30, 1924
• Mechanism (event): unknown
• Medical Cause: unknown
• Manner: undetermined
• Burial: Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 47, Lot 2, Section 1
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 291554659
• Other Information: Ivor Williams first appears in the Rocky Mountain News on May 22, 1924, in a brief personal notice stating that he was “of Rollinsville, Colorado,” and married Mildred Miller of Denver—an item that places him firmly in the communities surrounding the Moffat Tunnel during its mid-construction period. Five months later, the same paper carried a starkly different entry: “Williams—At East Portal, Moffat Tunnel, Ivor Williams, beloved husband of Mrs. Mildred Williams. Notice of funeral services later. Arrangements by Bengston-Rumin.” No follow-up obituary or accident report has yet surfaced, leaving the circumstances of his death unrecorded. What the paired notices establish, however, is that a newly married man died at East Portal within months of his union, where life events and fatal outcomes often appeared side by side in the same year’s newsprint.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Ivor Williams, please let us know.

#8 | 1924 | Ray Harman Coles

• Age: 25
• Birth: Tuesday, September 5, 1899
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Thursday, November 13, 1924
• Mechanism (event): illness (diabetes)
• Medical Cause: diabetes mellitus
• Manner: natural (occupational illness)
• Burial: Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 55, Lot 49, Section 20
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 32428798
• Other Information: Coles died at the West Portal hospital. At first glance, a death from diabetes might be dismissed as a purely natural cause, unrelated to tunnel construction. Yet records note he had been living with diabetes for about a year—a diagnosis that, in the 1920s, often meant survival was measured in months without steady insulin therapy. Even with a modern hospital on site, staffed around the clock and equipped with x-ray capability, the disease remained virtually untreatable. Insulin had only been in use since 1922 and was not reliably available in remote Colorado, and there were no tools to monitor blood sugar beyond symptoms. At just 25, he almost certainly suffered from what is now recognized as Type 1 diabetes, entirely dependent on insulin. Contemporary accounts describe men filing through the mess hall each morning to pack food for their shifts: some took sandwiches, but many carried bread, potatoes, and “five or six pieces of pie and nothing else, or perhaps as many pieces of cake.” For a diabetic, such a diet, combined with hard labor at altitude, produced dangerous blood sugar swings and heightened the risk of diabetic ketoacidosis, a crisis doctors could not reverse without reliable insulin or fluids. While classified as natural, his death was inseparable from the tunneling environment, showing the project claimed lives not only through accidents but also by straining fragile health.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Ray Cole
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Ray Harman Coles, please let us know.

#9 | 1924 | George Schaaf

• Age: 22
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Tuesday, December 9, 1924
• Mechanism (event): exposure/respiratory
• Medical Cause: pneumonia
• Manner: natural (occupational illness)
• Burial: Cedar Creek Cemetery, Montrose, Colorado | Section F, Block 15, Lot 3, NE 1/4.
• Headstone: Monument located and confirmed. (As of April 18, 2011, the grave was marked; sometime afterward, the marker vanished, leaving the site unidentifiable.)
• Find A Grave Memorial: 27488418
• Other Information: George Schaaf, a young Moffat Tunnel worker and twin son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Fred J. Schaaf, died of pneumonia in a Denver hospital after falling ill at the tunnel several days earlier; a Tuesday telegram from Denver reached his siblings in Montrose with the news. Born in Russia twenty-two years before and brought to the United States at age seven, George and his twin brother, Oscar, had lived in the Montrose valley ever since, attending local schools and later working on the family farm. The longer obituary notes that he leaves four sisters—Mrs. John Schlich, Mrs. Phillip Schneider, and two younger sisters—and that both parents had died in Montrose several years earlier; it also records his membership in the Modern Woodmen of America. Funeral details appeared in two notices: one stating that services would be held Sunday at 2 p.m. at the German Lutheran Church with Rev. Jacob Eichorn and Rev. M. R. Bishop officiating, and another reporting that the body would arrive from Denver Wednesday with the funeral “probably” to be held Thursday at the same church with Rev. Eichhorn; both agree that interment would take place in Cedar [Creek] Cemetery.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Shaff, Schaff
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about George Schaaf, please let us know.

#10 | 1924 | Harvey Lee Gilson

• Age: 50
• Birth: Tuesday, December 29, 1874 in Gilson Gulch, Clear Creek County, Colorado
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Sunday, December 28, 1924
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (rockfall caused lacerations and subsequent blood poisoning; incident occurred approximately three weeks prior to death)
• Medical Cause: sepsis from lacerations
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Mountain View Cemetery, Longmont, Colorado | Block 36, Lot 42, N1/2, Space 3
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 60882306
• Other Information: Harvey Lee Gilson died at his home at 820 Concord early on a Sunday morning after five weeks of blood poisoning that began with a hand injury sustained while working at the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel due to a rock fall. He spent nearly three weeks in the East Portal hospital before being transferred to Boulder for further treatment, but the infection continued to advance. He is survived by his wife and six children—Gail, Harley, Eva, Dorothy, and two married daughters—as well as two brothers, one living in Fort Lupton and another in Casper, and three sisters spread across Longmont, Henderson, and elsewhere in Colorado. His body was taken to the Tippett Home mortuary while the family, most of whom were in Santa Ana, California, coordinated final arrangements.
• Gilson’s World War I Draft Card states that he was of medium height, stout build, with dark brown hair and brown eyes.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Harry Lee Jilson. Tombstone says ‘Harvy’
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Harvey Lee Gilson, please let us know.

#11 | 1925 | Joseph Grusser

• Age: 34
• Birth: Sunday, February 9, 1890 in Austria
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Thursday, January 22, 1925
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (cave in)
• Medical Cause: crush/asphyxia
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 12, Lot 31, Section 45, no headstone
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 86908016
• Other Information: The following obituary was published in The Moffat County Bell, on February 13, 1925: “TO THE MEMORY OF JOSEPH GRUSSER As the result of the tragic death of our neighbor and companion, Joseph Grusser, it is the desire of his friends that the following article to his memory be published in your columns. The tunnel has taken its toll. The death of our neighbor and friend, tried and true, has been greatly felt by the people in this part of the county. Joe Grusser of Burned Park lost his life at 4 P.M. on Thursday, January 22, as the result of a cave-in at West Portal. His loss to us is irreparable, for a more noble and honorable character never graced our community. Joe was born about 35 years ago in Austria. He came to America in 1914 and to this community in 1919. Since then he has been one of us, loved as a brother by all. He filed on his homestead in Burned Park in August, 1920, and his patient, earnest work thereon gives strong proof of his noble character. The name of Joe was always one of respect. Even while he lived, no one could find fault with him in any way. His happy smile will be remembered by all who knew him, and his absence will be greatly felt in this part of the county. Foreign born, a true American; the laws of his adopted land were as the laws of the Almighty, to whom he now returns. He passed, we feel confident, with no fear of the hereafter, for his life was without reproach. He lived among us, setting an example of honesty and integrity that will leave a strong impression upon us all. May God give you peace, well deserved, and a reward befitting your noble life, departed friend. MASON O. BROUSE”
• Grusser’s description in the Arriving Passenger Manifest Lists for the SS President Lincoln in New York indicates that he was 5 feet 8 inches tall, with brown hair and blue eyes.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Brusser, Gruesser, Gresser, Josef
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Joseph Grusser, please let us know.

#12 | 1925 | Warren Weaver Wilson

• Age: 32
• Birth: Friday, August 12, 1892 in Enterprise, Alabama
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): shift boss
• Date of Death: Friday, February 27, 1925
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (falling rock)
• Medical Cause: blunt trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Damascus Church Cemetery, Enterprise, Alabama
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 130141425
• Other Information: Warren Weaver “Weaver” Wilson was born September 2, 1892 in Coffee County, Alabama, one of several siblings in a close-knit Southern family that later sent two sons to the front lines of World War I. Weaver served in the U.S. Army, deployed to France, and returned home to an honorable discharge in June 1919. Like many unmarried veterans who sought steady work in the postwar West, he found his way to Colorado’s most ambitious engineering project—the Moffat Tunnel, where he became a shift boss at the West Portal. On the morning of February 27, 1925, Weaver was working just beyond Crosscut No. 4, where crews were widening wall plates along the railroad bore. A shot had been fired to break down rock on one side of the excavation, and the lights—customarily shut off during blasting—were still dark when Weaver stepped back into the heading to continue the shift’s work. In that brief interval, before illumination returned, a single large block of rock loosened by the blast detached and struck him on the head. Contemporary reports emphasized that there was no general slide, no catastrophic collapse—just one unpredictable, fatal fragment. When the lights were restored minutes later, Weaver was found dead. He was 32, though early newspaper coverage incorrectly listed his age. Five days earlier, on February 22, 1925, a letter from his brother Jesse Tarver Wilson had reached the West Portal camp. In it, Jesse wrote with the plainspoken urgency of someone who sensed the risks more clearly than distance should have allowed: “Weaver, we want you to be careful and let your conscience guide you in that dangerous work. When you see danger looking you in the face stay out if it takes your job.” That plea—arriving on the eve of the accident—underscores both how dangerous the West Portal’s work truly was and how well the family understood the stakes long before headlines confirmed them. Weaver was unmarried and left no direct descendants, but he did not die alone in a frontier sense. The fraternal networks that anchored the tunnel camps stepped forward immediately. The Elks and the Masons arranged and funded the transportation of his body from Colorado back to Alabama—a gesture typical of fraternal orders in the 1920s and a quiet measure of Weaver’s standing among the men who lived and worked with him under the Divide. Returned to his home state, he was buried among family, closing the short, hard arc of a life that carried him from rural Alabama to the trenches of France and finally to the west side of James Peak, where a single block of rock ended the service he had continued in civilian form. An extra special thank-you to the family who shared this letter and additional details with us.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Warren Weaver Wilson, please let us know.

#13 | 1925 | Edgar Ellsworth Adams

• Age: 51
• Birth: Friday, September 26, 1873 in Monroe, Iowa
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): engineer
• Date of Death: Monday, March 2, 1925
• Mechanism (event): traumatic injury complications (amputation of an arm that led to death)
• Medical Cause: amputation sequelae
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Elmwood Cemetery, Fruita, Colorado | Block 5, Row 10
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 75573650
• Other Information: Adams, an engineer working at the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel, suffered a catastrophic injury when his hand was pulled into a set of moving cogs, dragging his arm nearly to the shoulder. Surgeons amputated the crushed limb in an effort to save his life, but he died on March 2 from the trauma and ensuing complications—a stark reminder of how even routine machinery work in the camps carried risks that could turn fatal in seconds.
• Adams’ World War I Draft Card states that he was of medium height, medium build, with brown hair and blue eyes.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): A.E. Adams
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Edgar Ellsworth Adams, please let us know.

#14 | 1925 | James Guthrie King

• Age: 39
• Birth: Wednesday, August 5, 1885 in Louisville, Kentucky
• Townsite Association: unknown
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Tuesday, April 28, 1925
• Mechanism (event): untreated trauma leading to infection and systemic failure
• Medical Cause: death certificate cites chronic endocarditis with secondary pneumonia; family recalls he was injured while working on the Moffat Tunnel, dismissed with a pink slip, and died several days later—no autopsy was performed
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 43, Plot 265, Grave 2
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 40836786
• Other Information: James Guthrie King, age 39, is recorded as having died of “chronic endocarditis (acute exacerbation)” with secondary bronchial pneumonia. His family recalls that he had been working as a laborer on the Moffat Tunnel when an accident left him unable to continue; the company sent him home with a “pink slip,” and he died only a few days later. The medical entry warrants close examination. Chronic endocarditis severe enough to be fatal was possible in the pre-antibiotic era, but death at 39 typically occurred in individuals with identifiable underlying conditions—rheumatic valve damage, congenital defects, or a sustained bloodstream infection. Even then, the illness generally progressed over weeks or months, not days. Sudden deterioration could occur, but such events leave internal signs that cannot be confirmed without opening the body. No autopsy was performed on King. Diagnosing chronic endocarditis requires inspection of the heart valves, and confirming pneumonia requires direct visualization of infected lung tissue. Without a postmortem, the attending physician would have had to rely on clinical impressions alone. In that situation, a recorded cause of death reflects a best judgment under the constraints of the moment, not a verified mechanism. The sequence described by King’s family—a workplace accident, abrupt removal from employment, and death shortly afterward—makes it reasonable to question whether the recorded cause captures the full picture. In the 1920s, physicians working in industrial settings frequently completed death certificates without autopsy, and employers generally faced fewer obligations when deaths were attributed to illness rather than injury. That broader environment does not prove that King’s case followed that pattern, but it provides context for why the stated cause may have been more presumptive than conclusive. Taken together—his age, the atypical medical presentation, the lack of autopsy, and the family’s recollection—the officially listed cause of death is best understood as an unverified clinical opinion rather than a demonstrably established cause.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about James Guthrie King, please let us know.

#15 | 1925 | Orville J. Markham

• Age: 25
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Thursday, May 14, 1925
• Mechanism (event): exposure/respiratory
• Medical Cause: pneumonia
• Manner: natural (occupational illness)
• Burial: Mountain View Cemetery, Longmont, Colorado | Block 27, Lot 30, Space 2
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 60873346
• Other Information: Orville J. Markham, 25, died of pneumonia at Denver’s General Hospital after a week-long illness that began while he was working at the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel. His condition deteriorated so rapidly that he was moved to Denver before his parents were even notified, and the news of his death reached them as a painful surprise. Unmarried, he is survived by his parents, three brothers, and one sister. Funeral services were set for Saturday afternoon at the Longmont Methodist Church, with burial to follow at Mountain View Cemetery.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Orville J. Markham, please let us know.

#16 | 1925 | Gage Maxwell Beegle

• Age: 22
• Birth: Friday, February 13, 1903 in Kenton, Ohio
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Friday, June 5, 1925
• Mechanism (event): explosion (drill hit an unexploded charge of dynamite)
• Medical Cause: blast trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Fairview Cemetery, Galion, Ohio | Section 12
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 110575468
• Other Information: Gage Maxwell Beegle arrived at the West Portal of the Moffat Tunnel in late May or early June 1924 with the straightforward plan shared by many Colorado School of Mines students: earn money during vacation, gain practical mining experience, and return to Golden better prepared for the academic year ahead. He was roughly ten days into that work when, in the early morning hours of June 4, a misfire buried in the tunnel face set in motion the accident that ended his life and reshaped the morning’s shift into an emergency. On the previous shift, one of the dynamite charges had failed to detonate. Misfires were common enough that crews had standard procedures for locating them. According to the miners themselves, Beegle’s shift searched for the missed shot but could not find it. Believing they would avoid it, they resumed mucking and drilling. The drill advanced about eight inches before striking the hidden dynamite. As the “chuck tender,” Beegle was positioned closest to the bit—between the machine and the tunnel face—when the explosion erupted. He absorbed the full force of the blast, killing him instantly and mangling the lower half of his body. The intensity of the detonation injured several men around him, yet their survival makes clear how decisively his position shielded the others. The initial confusion was profound. Early reports from the portal suggested catastrophic loss of life: undertakers from Olinger in Denver and another from Golden rushed to West Portal after first word claimed that six men had been killed outright and many more mortally wounded. As the facts settled, it became clear that Beegle was the only fatality, though the injury profile was severe. Olaf Nelson of Centennial, Wyoming, lost one eye and appeared likely to lose the other. A miner named Neff was badly cut but not blinded. Four or five more were treated on site for cuts and bruises. Newspapers repeatedly framed the outcome as something close to miraculous—that six or eight men standing together during a blast of this magnitude had not died instantly. The inquest convened later that day inside the tunnel did not determine blame. Reporting from the portal emphasized that investigators lacked enough information to assign responsibility. The workmen’s account remained the clearest narrative: a missed hole, efforts to locate the charge, and the decision to proceed when the powder could not be found. The uncertainty embedded in their testimony underscores a wider truth about tunneling on the Divide in these years. Even experienced crews, supported by on-site physicians and hospital facilities at both portals, could not fully eliminate the risks created by misfires, fractured ground, and rapid-fire shift turnover. This particular blast was described in multiple newspapers as the first serious accident since construction began—an acknowledgment that its violence exceeded the daily baseline of tunnel hazards. For Mines, the loss was not abstract. Beegle was a sophomore mining student, having transferred after two years at Ohio State University. He was known for his extraordinary height and for his promise on the football field, where he played tackle on the freshman squad and was expected to make the varsity team in the fall. He belonged to Mu Epsilon Tau fraternity and the Ohio Club, and by every contemporary description had quickly become one of the most popular young men on campus. His decision to spend the summer at West Portal was shaped by both financial necessity and academic ambition: he intended to work three more weeks before returning to Golden to enroll in the summer school session. Beegle was the only son of John and Mrs. John Beegle of Crestline, Ohio. Reports followed his father’s hurried journey west—first to Golden and then up to West Portal—to investigate the accident that had taken his child. Once the inquest concluded and the formalities were completed, Gage’s body was sent home to Crestline for burial. Taken together, the contemporary accounts portray a tightly bounded sequence: a missed shot, a failed search for the charge, a new shift stepping into work believed to be safe, and the moment the drill found what the eyes and hands of experienced miners could not. The undertakers’ rushed arrival on the strength of erroneous reports captures the chaos that followed; the inquest’s inability to assign fault reflects the limits of what could be reconstructed in the dark, wet confines of a heading nearly 8,000 feet from the portal. And at the center of that uncertainty stands a young man who placed himself in the closest, most dangerous position—one that, in the instant the dynamite detonated, determined not only the outcome for him but the survival of the men around him.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): G.M or GE, James W Beagle, CM Biegle
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Gage Maxwell Beegle, please let us know.

#17 | 1925 | Virgil Scott Hosey

• Age: 33
• Birth: Friday, February 19, 1892 in Stockton, Missouri
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Wednesday, July 1, 1925
• Mechanism (event): unknown
• Medical Cause: unknown
• Manner: undetermined
• Burial: Elmwood Cemetery, Brighton, Colorado | Section 2, Block 42
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 101420071
• Other Information: Virgil Scott Hosey, born in 1892 and drawn to the demanding world of East Portal during the Moffat Tunnel era, appears in the record mostly through the quiet markers of service and family rather than through any detailed narrative. He registered for World War I, joining the many young men whose lives left only brief documentary traces. He married Mabel, two years his junior, and her choice not to remarry before her death in 1990 reflects how enduring that early bond remained. His death in 1925, coming so early in adulthood and without a documented cause, suggests that something significant occurred in a place where accidents, illness, and environmental hazards shaped daily life—even if the surviving sources offer no explanation for what, precisely, ended his story.
• Hosey’s World War I Draft Card states that he was of short height, medium build, with black hair and gray eyes.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Vergil
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Virgil Scott Hosey, please let us know.

#18 | 1925 | John Henry Nicholls

• Age: 57
• Birth: Friday, October 18, 1867 in Rockland, Michigan
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Sunday, August 30, 1925
• Mechanism (event): exposure/respiratory
• Medical Cause: pneumonia
• Manner: natural (occupational illness)
• Burial: Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 80, Lot 24, Grave 4
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 93520896
• Other Information: John Henry Nicholls’ death offers a window into a category of tunnel-related fatalities that rarely receives the scrutiny afforded to dramatic accidents: respiratory illness shaped by the environment inside the bore. Contemporary accounts and surviving photographs consistently indicate that, while both ends of the Moffat Tunnel were cold and windy, the west side was substantially wetter. Workers recalled vast sections where the rock was so soft it could be excavated by hand, and period images show water streaming from the ceiling and collecting in puddles along the floor. That combination of cold and constant moisture created a damp microclimate in which respiratory ailments lingered and often worsened. The available mortality data, though incomplete, suggest that pneumonia took a meaningfully heavier toll on the west side—on the order of at least fifty percent more cases than at East Portal—a disparity fully consistent with that environmental difference. Nicholls’ experience aligns with what those conditions imply. A superintendent’s role required circulating through multiple headings, checking crews, evaluating progress, and responding to problems wherever they emerged. That mobility translated into more time underground than many laborers spent, and therefore more sustained exposure to the wettest portions of the bore. The obituary’s emphasis on a relapse of pneumonia—rather than a single acute illness—tracks closely with the kind of recurring respiratory setbacks that wet, cold air induced in workers long before antibiotics made such infections reliably survivable. Understanding Nicholls’ death through this environmental lens strengthens the broader picture of how the tunnel shaped mortality. His case demonstrates that fatal risk was not confined to explosive misfires or rockfalls; the tunnel’s interior climate posed its own slow-moving dangers, and those dangers disproportionately affected the west side. It also highlights that supervisory personnel, far from being insulated by rank, sometimes absorbed the highest cumulative exposures simply because their duties required them to move continuously through the bore. Nicholls, a veteran of thirty years in Colorado mining and superintendent at West Portal during the preceding winter, contracted his final illness while fulfilling exactly those responsibilities. Born in Detroit and brought to Colorado at age five, Nicholls received his early education in Silver Plume and Central City before embarking on a fifteen-year tenure operating the El Paso Gold Mining Company in the Cripple Creek district (1905–1920). He later managed the estate of James S. Burns of Colorado Springs with headquarters in Denver. During the winter prior to his death, he accepted the superintendent role at West Portal and worked there until roughly two months before he died at his home, 1066 Clarkson Street in Denver, on August 29, 1925, at age fifty-seven. He was survived by his wife, Ada Trevartha Nicholls, and two children, Annette Nicholls Svanteson of Chicago and Irving Henry Nicholls of Denver. Seen in full, Nicholls’ story expands the analytical frame for Moffat Tunnel fatalities. It shows that environmental illness, particularly pneumonia aggravated by the west side’s wetter conditions, was an occupational hazard embedded in the construction effort itself. His death underscores that the tunnel’s human cost cannot be measured solely by sudden accidents; the climate within the bore—especially on the western end—must be treated as a consequential part of the causal landscape.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about John Henry Nicholls, please let us know.

#19 | 1925 | Elmer H. Swett

• Age: unknown
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: NLT Monday, September 21, 1925
• Mechanism (event): unknown
• Medical Cause: unknown
• Manner: undetermined
• Burial: Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 14, Lot 16, Section 67, no headstone/unmarked
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 285710501
• Other Information: Elmer Swett remains one of the most elusive figures associated with the West Portal workforce. His only surviving public notice appears in Hofmann’s Mortuary listings, which repeatedly ran the same bare line—“SWETT—Elmer Swett, late of West Portal, Colo. Notice of funeral later.”—across multiple issues in late September (21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30). Despite that unusually persistent placeholder, no funeral notice, obituary, or service announcement has yet been located in any Denver-area newspaper, a silence that strongly suggests either a delayed disposition, private handling of arrangements, or the collapse of the mortuary notice pipeline before services were ever formalized. Cemetery records confirm his burial at Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado—Block 14, Lot 16, Section 67—without a headstone, reinforcing the likelihood that Swett died without local family, institutional sponsorship, or durable social ties in Colorado. What can be stated with confidence is narrow but consequential: at the time of his death, Swett was formally identified as being “of West Portal,” placing his final chapter within the operational orbit of the Moffat Tunnel project, even as the surrounding human record has nearly vanished.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Elmer H. Swett, please let us know.

#20 | 1925 | William M. Giener

• Age: 33
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): scaler
• Date of Death: Sunday, September 27, 1925
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (while scaling loose rock, a large piece gave way and crushed him)
• Medical Cause: crush trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, Colorado
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 120013168
• Other Information: In the early morning hours of Sunday, September 27–28, 1925, William M. Giener, a scaler working inside the main railroad bore at the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel, was instantly killed when a mass of rock fell on him following a dynamite blast. Contemporary newspapers reported that his duties required him to follow the dynamiters and pry loose unstable rock with crowbars, placing him directly beneath freshly blasted ceilings at the moment of collapse. The same accounts state that he was survived by a wife and three small children living at East Portal. Burial records at Fairmount Cemetery list him as “Wm. M. Giener,” age 34, interred on October 1, 1925, establishing this September death as a fully confirmed fatality based on contemporaneous accident reporting and cemetery documentation. No Colorado Bureau of Mines report was published for 1925, removing what would otherwise be a key independent verification layer for this death.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Geiner
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about William M. Giener, please let us know.

#21 | 1925 | Fred Sperandio

• Age: 37-38
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): West Portal pool hall proprietor
• Date of Death: Sunday, December 20, 1925
• Mechanism (event): violence (murdered, bullet through the heart)
• Medical Cause: gunshot wound
• Manner: homicide
• Burial: Evergreen Cemetery, Leadville, Colorado | IOOF section
• Headstone: Monument located and confirmed.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 192159189
• Other Information: On a winter night in late December 1925, in a settlement carved from snowdrifts and railroad ambition, Fred Sperandio opened the back door of his recreation hall to someone he appeared to recognize. A match flared briefly against cold timber. A single shot cracked through the darkness. By sunrise, the quiet community of West Portal—perched at the western mouth of the not-yet-completed Moffat Tunnel—had become the epicenter of a killing that baffled investigators, unsettled tunnel workers, and left a mystery that still lingers in the high country. Newspaper accounts from Denver, Leadville, Fraser, and Colorado Springs scrambled to reconstruct the life and death of the Italian immigrant who managed the West Portal recreation hall and was struck down in the same room where he slept. Their coverage, uneven yet earnest, reveals a man whose life blended courage with conflict—and a crime scene that raised more questions than the bloodhounds, posses, or railroad guards could resolve. Fred Sperandio was born in Tyrol, Italy, in 1887. Growing up “in the shadow of the Alps,” he later served in the Austrian army before emigrating to the United States with his brother James in 1911. He worked in the mines at Trinidad, then Leadville, where he managed the Big Four Mine with A. Seppi. In 1921, he moved west to the new industrial outpost at West Portal. There, Sperandio purchased a half interest in the recreation hall—a soft-drink and pool establishment that doubled as the social center of the tunnel camp. Friends described him as adventurous, bold, loyal to those he trusted. Others called him reckless, fiercely competitive, and a skilled gambler who could consistently win. Some insisted he had no enemies. Others quietly admitted he had made a few. Both portraits appear to be true. He could be generous and warm, but his fearlessness, his winnings at cards, and his habit of keeping large sums of cash nearby placed him in currents that did not always remain visible on the surface. By December 1925, Sperandio lived in a small room at the back of the recreation hall. He was known to keep night receipts and private winnings hidden in secret caches inside the room. He understood the risk, but risk had shaped his life from Europe’s mountains to Colorado’s mines. Confidence served him well—until the night it did not. On Saturday night, December 19, Sperandio closed the hall near midnight and went to bed. Sometime later, a sound came from the rear alley door. Every surviving account agrees on the crucial sequence: Sperandio rose, dressed at least partially, lit a match to see his way, and opened the door to someone he appeared to know. Whether words were exchanged is unknown. A .45-caliber Colt automatic fired a single shot. The bullet passed through his heart. He died where he fell. At daylight, Edward Evans—the hall’s day manager—arrived to open the business and found Sperandio on the floor. The room had been ransacked. Mattresses were slashed open. One showed signs of burning, as did parts of Sperandio’s clothing. The bed itself had been set alight. Someone had tried to burn the room, the body, or both. The cash register had been emptied of approximately $125. More significantly, the hidden money in Sperandio’s room—reported at between $1,500 and $1,800—was gone. (In 2025 dollars, that amount translates to approximately $28,000–$33,000.) Grand County Sheriff Mark E. Fletcher and Deputy Sheriff James Quinn arrived from Hot Sulphur Springs, but the facts resisted clean resolution. Initial reports floated the idea of two killers—one concealed inside the hall before closing and another waiting outside the living quarters. Within forty-eight hours, Fletcher publicly reversed course, stating that he now believed one man committed the murder and that “clues unearthed” supported the conclusion that the killer was acquainted with Sperandio. The sheriff’s reconstructed sequence—repeated in multiple Denver papers—held that Sperandio was awakened by a noise at the rear door, got up and dressed, and stepped forward with a match when the concealed robber fired. This version better fit the room’s tight layout, the single point of entry, and the precision of the shot. More importantly, it aligned with the inference that Sperandio would only open that door after midnight for someone he trusted. The conflicting portrayals of his personal life now took on sharper meaning. Some newspapers quoted locals saying he had “no enemies.” Others, drawing from Leadville acquaintances who had known him for years, acknowledged that he had made a few. Against the intimate nature of the killing and the deliberate effort to destroy evidence afterward, the latter assessment carries greater weight. This was not a random crime of opportunity. It was an act shaped by knowledge—of the man, his habits, and the money he concealed. West Portal lay buried under deep snow that week. Every report emphasizes the same constraint: roads were impassable beneath towering drifts. Fletcher declared that escape by road was impossible and stationed men on the mountain passes in case the killer attempted flight on snowshoes. The only viable route out was the railroad. Trains on the Moffat Road over Rollins Pass were guarded and passenger lists examined. One Denver story reported that a man who boarded at West Portal could not be accounted for when the train reached Denver. No surviving follow-up identified him. Recognizing that time was erasing tracks by the hour, Fletcher summoned bloodhounds from the Quillen kennels in Colorado Springs. When released at the scene on December 22, the dogs ran directly toward the railroad depot, circling and moaning when the scent failed. Another account stated they followed a trail from West Portal to Fraser—five miles away—before losing it near the tracks. Whether these reports describe the same trail or different ones cannot be resolved from surviving articles. What is consistent is the conclusion drawn at the time: the killer moved toward the railroad, and whatever trace he left dissolved at or near the line. Sperandio’s brothers, James and Charles, arrived from Denver within days. James returned with the body that evening. Charles remained at West Portal, assisting the sheriff for several days. By December 23, Fletcher announced that an arrest was “entirely probable within the next few days.” Yet by the time lengthy obituaries appeared in Leadville, no suspect had been named, no charges filed, and no trail remained. What survived instead was the image of a man shaped by mountains on two continents; of courage, charm, and intensity that drew both loyalty and resentment; and of a final moment defined by trust, surprise, and violence. The case closed not with resolution but with disappearance—whether the killer vanished over snow, rode a westbound train, or simply merged back into the transient population of workers and gamblers that passed through West Portal that winter. The newspapers ended the matter with words as stark as tracks erased by drifting snow: “No trace of the murderer has been found.” A century later, that remains the last official word. Fred Sperandio was unmarried and a member of the American Federation of Human Rights, an international co-Masonic lodge. He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Leadville, Colorado, in the IOOF section—a place of calm that offers a measure of closure the investigation never achieved. His death appears on the Moffat Tunnel fatality ledger not because he died inside the bore, but because it occurred within the West Portal settlement and arose directly from the social and economic conditions created by the tunnel project itself.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Sperando, Sperendio, Sterandio, Sterando, Perendio
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Fred Sperandio, please let us know.

#22 | 1925 | William Marion Gimer

• Age: 34
• Birth: Friday, June 5, 1891 in Kansas
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Sunday, December 27, 1925
• Mechanism (event): unknown
• Medical Cause: unknown
• Manner: undetermined
• Burial: Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 48
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 31972545
• Other Information: Two retrospective newspaper fatality lists published the name “W. M. Ginner” alongside the September 1925 fatality of William M. Giener, but each entry was presented with a distinct date, reporting that Ginner died of injuries received at the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel on December 27, 1925. In those summaries, the December death does not appear to be a typographical carryover of the September fatality, as the two entries are listed separately and assigned different dates within the same published lists. Unlike the September death, however, this December entry is not accompanied by a contemporaneous accident article, a description of the injury mechanism, or an independently located civil death certificate tied specifically to December 27. A tombstone bearing the name “Gimer” exists in Block 48 at Fairmount Cemetery, but no burial ledger entry or death certificate has yet been located that conclusively links that grave to the December 1925 death reported under the name “W. M. Ginner,” as opposed to the September fatality recorded as William M. Giener. Nevertheless, because multiple newspapers explicitly associate “W. M. Ginner” with a fatal injury at East Portal and treat the December death as a separate event, this fatality is retained as a distinct, provisionally included death under the project’s inclusive standard. As with the September fatality, the absence of a published Colorado Bureau of Mines report for 1925 materially limits independent cross-verification of this death.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): W. M. Ginner, Geimer
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about William Marion Gimer, please let us know.

#23 | 1926 | Peter Giacomelli

• Age: 21
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): track repairer
• Date of Death: Saturday, January 2, 1926
• Mechanism (event): asphyxiation (likely gas)
• Medical Cause: anoxic injury
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 14, Plot 309, Grave 8
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 209408822
• Other Information: Shortly after midnight in the opening days of January 1926, three track workers—Peter Giacomelli, Dan Metroff, and Frank Christian—were deep inside the pioneer tunnel at the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel. A scheduled dynamite blast in the main heading detonated as expected, and the three men saw the familiar warning lights that told them the explosion was coming. Under normal conditions, a canvas bulkhead separating the pioneer bore from the main workings would hold back the blast fumes long enough for the blowers to push fresh air ahead of the men. That temporary barrier was their only protection. This time it failed. Whether “jerked aside,” “whipped by the force of the blast,” or “caught” on an obstruction, the outcome in every newspaper account is identical: the bulkhead didn’t close, and explosive gases surged through crosscut No. 8 into the pioneer tunnel. The three workers, suddenly exposed to a rising wave of toxic powder fumes, began coughing, choking, and fighting to keep their footing. All understood instantly that the bulkhead had failed. They had only one chance: reach the blowers and the cleaner air ahead. For a brief stretch they pushed forward together through the thickening fumes. Christian remained the strongest; the other two weakened first. As dizziness overtook them, Christian physically supported Giacomelli and Metroff, but eventually all three collapsed. Searchers entering the tunnel minutes later found them unconscious in the bore, overcome by the fumes the bulkhead should have held back. The men were rushed to the tunnel mouth for emergency treatment. Giacomelli, age 21, died at 6:00am. Metroff died roughly two hours later. Christian, barely alive, was slipping toward the same fate. What happened next became the subject of a medical retrospective printed about a year later. That article described how Dr. Ray Sunderland, the East Portal physician, resorted to a then-extraordinary approach: he strapped an oxygen mask to the dying man and kept him breathing pure oxygen for more than six hours. At a time when prolonged oxygen therapy was still considered experimental, Sunderland’s decision was a deliberate gamble. According to the report, the patient revived and ultimately recovered, a result framed as an emerging milestone in medical practice. The timing, the number of victims, the mechanism of injury, and the fact that only one man survived all make clear that this retrospective describes Frank Christian, the sole survivor of the Giacomelli–Metroff accident. Indeed, an article published January 5, 1926 carried the headline “tunnel gas victim on way to recovery,” while the article reported that “Frank Christian… who was overcome by gas which caused the death of his two companions in the Moffat Tunnel late Saturday night, was reported to be on the road to recovery last night.” Newspaper follow-ups attempted to locate relatives. Metroff’s family could not be found. Giacomelli’s situation was more complex. Records linked him to a Denver boarding address—2134 California Street—and revealed he had married in September 1924. His wife had inexplicably vanished from the boarding house on December 29, telling her landlady she was leaving to join her husband at East Portal; four letters from him arrived afterward, suggesting he did not know she had gone. Giacomelli, who had begun tunnel work only days earlier on December 27, had spent much of his life with his aunt, Mrs. Mary Marcolina, now living with her son, Denver patrolman Otto P. Marcolina, at 2806 Clay Street. Another cousin, John P. Marcolina, worked as a mechanic for Colorado Iron and Metal and lived at 2614 West Ninth Avenue. No relatives for Metroff were identified in any of the coverage.
• Newspapers reported that six workers had been killed in previous accidents prior to Giacomelli and Metroff, below.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Giaconelli
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Peter Giacomelli, please let us know.

#24 | 1926 | Dan Metroff

• Age: 33
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Saturday, January 2, 1926
• Mechanism (event): asphyxiation (likely gas)
• Medical Cause: anoxic injury
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 14, Lot 10, Section 136
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 285710041
• Other Information: Shortly after midnight in the opening days of January 1926, three track workers—Peter Giacomelli, Dan Metroff, and Frank Christian—were deep inside the pioneer tunnel at the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel. A scheduled dynamite blast in the main heading detonated as expected, and the three men saw the familiar warning lights that told them the explosion was coming. Under normal conditions, a canvas bulkhead separating the pioneer bore from the main workings would hold back the blast fumes long enough for the blowers to push fresh air ahead of the men. That temporary barrier was their only protection. This time it failed. Whether “jerked aside,” “whipped by the force of the blast,” or “caught” on an obstruction, the outcome in every newspaper account is identical: the bulkhead didn’t close, and explosive gases surged through crosscut No. 8 into the pioneer tunnel. The three workers, suddenly exposed to a rising wave of toxic powder fumes, began coughing, choking, and fighting to keep their footing. All understood instantly that the bulkhead had failed. They had only one chance: reach the blowers and the cleaner air ahead. For a brief stretch they pushed forward together through the thickening fumes. Christian remained the strongest; the other two weakened first. As dizziness overtook them, Christian physically supported Giacomelli and Metroff, but eventually all three collapsed. Searchers entering the tunnel minutes later found them unconscious in the bore, overcome by the fumes the bulkhead should have held back. The men were rushed to the tunnel mouth for emergency treatment. Giacomelli, age 21, died at 6:00am. Metroff died roughly two hours later. Christian, barely alive, was slipping toward the same fate. What happened next became the subject of a medical retrospective printed about a year later. That article described how Dr. Ray Sunderland, the East Portal physician, resorted to a then-extraordinary approach: he strapped an oxygen mask to the dying man and kept him breathing pure oxygen for more than six hours. At a time when prolonged oxygen therapy was still considered experimental, Sunderland’s decision was a deliberate gamble. According to the report, the patient revived and ultimately recovered, a result framed as an emerging milestone in medical practice. The timing, the number of victims, the mechanism of injury, and the fact that only one man survived all make clear that this retrospective describes Frank Christian, the sole survivor of the Giacomelli–Metroff accident. Indeed, an article published January 5, 1926 carried the headline “tunnel gas victim on way to recovery,” while the article reported that “Frank Christian… who was overcome by gas which caused the death of his two companions in the Moffat Tunnel late Saturday night, was reported to be on the road to recovery last night.” Newspaper follow-ups attempted to locate relatives. Metroff’s family could not be found. Giacomelli’s situation was more complex. Records linked him to a Denver boarding address—2134 California Street—and revealed he had married in September 1924. His wife had inexplicably vanished from the boarding house on December 29, telling her landlady she was leaving to join her husband at East Portal; four letters from him arrived afterward, suggesting he did not know she had gone. Giacomelli, who had begun tunnel work only days earlier on December 27, had spent much of his life with his aunt, Mrs. Mary Marcolina, now living with her son, Denver patrolman Otto P. Marcolina, at 2806 Clay Street. Another cousin, John P. Marcolina, worked as a mechanic for Colorado Iron and Metal and lived at 2614 West Ninth Avenue. No relatives for Metroff were identified in any of the coverage.
• Newspapers reported that six workers had been killed in previous accidents prior to Giacomelli, above and Metroff.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Dan Metroff, please let us know.

#25 | 1926 | William Everette Hibbert

• Age: 43
• Birth: Sunday, April 9, 1882
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Friday, January 15, 1926
• Mechanism (event): abscess of the stomach, progressed to sepsis and organ failure
• Medical Cause: stomach abscess
• Manner: natural (community death)
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 30, Plot 263, Grave 2
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 169473252
• Other Information: William Everette Hibbert’s final months capture the quiet vulnerability that shadowed even the most experienced workers living at the Moffat Tunnel portals. A longtime rancher from Long Gulch—fifteen miles northwest of Steamboat Springs—he sold his machinery and chattel in the summer of 1925 before heading to West Portal to begin tunnel work. His wife, Nanette Lester Hibbert, and their five children joined him there, signaling a family fully committed to weathering the hardship of remote, high-altitude living for the promise of steady wages. Contemporary accounts note that “preparations were made to remove him to Denver… but he passed away before reaching there,” a detail that reinforces how rapidly his condition deteriorated despite efforts to secure higher-level care. Newspaper reports described his illness as an “abscess of the stomach,” a diagnosis that, in that era, almost always signaled a cascading medical emergency. An intra-abdominal abscess progressing to sepsis and organ failure aligns more closely with the abrupt decline described in the sources than the secondary claim of pneumonia, which appears to have been a reporter’s shorthand rather than a primary cause. Medical care at both West and East Portal was widely regarded as excellent for its time—with physicians, round-the-clock infirmary facilities, and rapid response to industrial injuries—but even strong care had limits when confronted with a fast-moving abdominal infection in a remote mountain camp. Hibbert died on Friday, January 15, 1926, at age fifty-two, surrounded by his wife and children. His remains were transported to Denver for burial near Nanette’s family. His death, though not caused by construction hazards, reflects the broader human cost of isolation, delayed evacuation, and the medical constraints inherent to one of Colorado’s most ambitious engineering undertakings. Harry H. Lester—Hibbert’s brother-in-law—was appointed administrator of the estate in mid-March of 1926 by Routt County Judge J. M. Childress, formally opening probate following Hibbert’s January 15 death at West Portal.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Hibbard
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about William Everette Hibbert, please let us know.

#26 | 1926 | Charles Wilton

• Age: 48 or 49
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): unknown
• Date of Death: Friday, January 29, 1926
• Mechanism (event): unknown
• Medical Cause: unknown
• Manner: undetermined
• Burial: Roselawn Cemetery, Pueblo, Colorado | Block 28, Plot 357, Grave 7
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 123003974
• Other Information: Charles Wilton was a Dutch-born laborer who spent the 1910s and early 1920s in Carson, Taos County, New Mexico, with his wife, Mabel, and their children Gertrude and Henry. Seeking work in the high-paying winter crews at the Moffat Tunnel, he traveled to West Portal, Colorado, where he died on January 29, 1926. Olinger Mortuary handled the transfer of his body to Denver, departing on the evening train of January 30, 1926, and Wilton was buried shortly thereafter in Roselawn Cemetery in Pueblo, in plot 28-357-7. No surviving record identifies how he died, and that absence is notable: while men in their forties faced greater health risks in the 1920s than they do today, an undocumented death at age forty-eight or forty-nine—especially in a remote construction environment—often signals either an accident or a sudden medical event for which formal documentation has not survived. As a result, the precise circumstances of his final day remain unknown. His wife carried on long after that winter and died March 28, 1979, reaching the age of ninety-four—a widow for more than half a century.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Charles Wilton, please let us know.

#27 | 1926 | John Charles “Jack” Davis

• Age: 45
• Birth: April 1880 in Osborne County, Kansas
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Wednesday, February 10, 1926
• Mechanism (event): struck-by/timbering accident (accident during timber inspection)
• Medical Cause: blunt trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Victor Sunnyside Cemetery, Victor, Colorado. Elks Rest Section (ER), Row 8, Plot 23
• Headstone: Monument located and confirmed. (On November 29, 2010, the tombstone’s dates were still visible above ground. Over time the grave sank several inches, and by the authors’ visit on September 8, 2025, only the faint tops of the numbers could be felt just beneath the soil. Out of respect for the site, we have noted its condition without further disturbance.)
• Find A Grave Memorial: 62059659
• Other Information: John Charles “Jack” Davis was born in April 1880 in Osborne County, Kansas, and by the mid-1920s had taken supervisory work at the west end of the Moffat Tunnel in Grand County, Colorado. He died at West Portal on February 10, 1926, at forty-five years of age. Family testimony holds that he was engaged in timber inspection inside the main bore when he was struck or otherwise injured—a struck-by or timbering accident that aligns with the hazards of winter work underground. Yet no surviving newspaper report or official record has been found that confirms the manner of death. The only contemporary public reference located to date is a brief mortuary notice—“Died—Davis, John Davis, at West Portal, Colo. Remains at Horan & Son funeral chapel. Funeral notice later.”—printed without further explanation. That silence is notable. Fatalities at the Moffat Tunnel were typically reported in at least a short article because the project’s risks, delays, and politics made each incident part of a broader public narrative. When a death appears solely in a mortuary line, the historian is left weighing several testable hypotheses: the cause may have been medical rather than industrial; the contractor may have treated the incident as routine; or the report may have circulated in an edition that has not survived. Without a death certificate, coroner’s record, or tunnel commission entry, the exact circumstances remain unverified. After his death, Horan & Son transported Davis to Denver before his burial at Sunnyside Cemetery in Victor, Teller County, Colorado. His interment in the Elks Rest section offers a consequential clue about his life. Cemeteries reserve such sections for members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks or individuals closely tied to the lodge, making it highly likely—though still a hypothesis pending lodge records—that Davis belonged to or was supported by the Elks, almost certainly through the Victor lodge. Fraternal-order affiliation would fit a man in a supervisory role, help explain the efficient handling of his remains, and clarify why a fuller obituary may never have appeared in the press: fraternal organizations often communicated deaths internally rather than through newspapers. Taken together, the sinking marker, the sparse archival footprint, and the fraternal-order burial show how a man working on one of Colorado’s most ambitious infrastructure projects can drift toward historical obscurity unless each surviving fragment—physical, documentary, and familial—is preserved with care.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about John Charles “Jack” Davis, please let us know.

#28 | 1926 | Forest N. Snow

• Age: 29
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): mucker
• Date of Death: Wednesday, February 24, 1926
• Mechanism (event): asphyxiation (likely gas)
• Medical Cause: anoxic injury
• Manner: accident
• Burial: unknown (reports show body was unclaimed in the morgue)
• Headstone: unknown
• Find A Grave Memorial: N/A
• Other Information: Forest N. Snow was working inside the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel in February 1926 when a blasting round went off ahead of him. According to the first reports filed from the tunnel, Snow and his partner, Tom Burke, returned toward the heading too soon after the blast and walked back through the main bore, entering lingering gas and smoke. Snow was overcome by the fumes and collapsed inside the tunnel. Burke, who was less affected, attempted to get him out but was unable to do so over the long distance to fresh air and summoned help. Snow died before he could be removed from the tunnel. Those contemporaneous accounts were consistent and explicit about the cause. Officials stated that Snow and Burke had violated standing safety orders by failing to use a crosscut into the pioneer bore, where fresh air was being forced, instead returning through the main bore based on the belief that the fumes would have dissipated at that distance—a dangerous but not uncommon misjudgment, not an act of self-harm. The Colorado Bureau of Mines’ 1926 investigation—conducted immediately, with direct access to testimony and tunnel rules—reached the same conclusion, classifying the death as accidental asphyxiation caused by a violation of safety procedures. In that context, the Bureau’s use of “deliberately” referred to a conscious breach of protocol, not intent to die. Only in April 1928, during retrospective coverage tied to the tunnel’s opening, did a single newspaper reframe the event as suicide. That late claim stands alone in the record and conflicts directly with the circumstances of the accident: a partner present and unharmed, a method offering no certainty of death, and an official investigation that found no evidence of self-harm. When those details are weighed together, Snow’s death resolves back into what the contemporaneous sources recorded—a tragic industrial accident later distorted in retrospective reporting of the Moffat Tunnel.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): F. M. or F. W., Forrest
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Forest N. Snow, please let us know.

#29 | 1926 | Charles Cecil “Charley” Decker

• Age: 18
• Birth: Tuesday, December 3, 1907 in Yampa, Colorado
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): mucker
• Date of Death: Friday, March 19, 1926
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (fall of rock)
• Medical Cause: crush trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: South Routt Cemetery, Yampa, Colorado | Section 4, Lot 78, Plot 4
• Headstone: Monument located and confirmed.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 57299320
• Other Information: Charles Cecil “Charley” Decker—almost certainly eighteen years old, despite several newspapers mistakenly reporting his age as twenty-two—was the next-to-youngest of the five Decker brothers from the Yampa–Toponas area. In early March 1926, after working only about a month as a mucker in the Moffat Tunnel’s West Portal heading, he was critically injured when a slab of roof rock fell following a blasting round. He had gone into the heading after the shot before the regular scaling crew had removed the loose rock, and the slab dropped without warning from the roof, striking him across the chest and knocking him backward onto an iron rail. His leg and pelvic bone were fractured, his ribs and back were injured, and the internal trauma was so severe that hospital staff at the West Portal camp regarded his condition as hopeless from the outset. Decker survived for nearly a day—long enough for his parents to reach the camp hospital and remain with him at the end—but he died from his injuries shortly afterward. His body was returned to Yampa, where funeral services were held at the Congregational Church, drawing a large gathering of relatives, neighbors, and lifelong friends. Six local young men who had grown up with him served as pallbearers, and multiple musical tributes were offered. He was buried in the Yampa Cemetery, mourned by his parents, four surviving brothers, and his grandmother, Phoebe Decker; he was also remembered as the nephew of Mrs. A. H. Chivington of Yampa. The obituary and community memorials written after his death spoke with unusual clarity about the kind of young man he had been. Friends and elders alike described him as physically strong yet unfailingly cheerful, steady in conduct, and “morally clean,” a boy who “stood out from among boys.” One tribute stated plainly that although he was gone, “his smile will always remain with us.” Newspapers said that his death cast “a deep gloom” across southern Routt County, not only because he had been taken so suddenly, but because he was just entering early manhood and held in universal esteem. Historically, Decker’s death reflects a well-recognized hazard in early twentieth-century tunneling work: post-blast roof falls before headings were fully made safe. In this case, that systemic risk converged with the inexperience and vulnerability of a very young worker who had been on the job only a short time. Yet the record that survives does more than document an industrial fatality. It preserves the memory of a bright, cheerful, and decent young man whose loss was felt keenly by his family and community—evidence that the human cost of the Moffat Tunnel project cannot be measured in statistics alone.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Charlie
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Charles Cecil “Charley” Decker, please let us know.

#30 | 1926 | James Clinton Platter

• Age: 41
• Birth: Thursday, September 11, 1884 in Iowa
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Tuesday, June 22, 1926
• Mechanism (event): jammed between a passing motor and timbers while working in the tunnel
• Medical Cause: crushing injuries to the hips and abdomen (per “seriously bruised about the hips”)
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Pleasant Hill Cemetery, Boone, Iowa | no headstone/unmarked
• Headstone: Approximate location available. (His burial site lies east of the headstone for Walton and Hazel Stumbo and west of the headstone for Clifford and Anna Platter. Facing south toward the church, his unmarked grave rests approximately midway between those two markers.)
• Find A Grave Memorial: 23099110
• Other Information: James Clinton Platter was born on Thursday, September 11, 1884, in Marcy Township, Boone County, Iowa, the son of Jonathan Tibet and Susan (Weyer) Platter. When he was only three years old, his mother died. James helped his father as a laborer on the family farm until about age thirteen, then went to live with his sister Clara in Montana. At sixteen he returned to Iowa to be near relatives. In February 1907, he married Lena Leona Longfellow in Iowa. The couple had no children. Around 1910, James and Lena moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where he farmed for the next fourteen years. Lena died there on Friday, April 25, 1919, a victim of the influenza epidemic that swept across Colorado. Her body was returned to Bonner Springs, Kansas, for burial near her parents, Jacob William and Sarah (Davis) Longfellow. On Monday, March 20, 1922, James married Mary L. Stanko in Steamboat Springs. They had two daughters, Cora Elnore and Edna Laurent. Seeking steady work to support his young family, James traveled in January 1924 to the West Portal construction camp of the Moffat Tunnel project in Grand County, Colorado. Two and a half years later, on Sunday, May 2, 1926, James was badly crushed while working underground. Despite the severity of his injuries, he survived for seven more weeks before dying on Tuesday, June 22, 1926, at the age of 41. His body was returned to Ogden, Iowa, where he was buried in an unmarked grave in Pleasant Hill Cemetery alongside his parents, brother Andrew, and sister Susan.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Clint
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about James Clinton Platter, please let us know.

#31 | 1926 | Ralph McClellan

• Age: 33
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): miner
• Date of Death: Thursday, July 22, 1926
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (fall of rock)
• Medical Cause: crush trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 84, Lot 1, Section 64
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 124652690
• Other Information: Ralph McClellan, thirty-three, had been working at the West Portal of the Moffat Tunnel since January 1926, serving as a benchman—a role that placed him in the immediate fall zone beneath freshly blasted or newly scaled rock. On Tuesday afternoon, July 20, 1926, he was struck and crushed by a falling boulder. Contemporary sources frame the injury as a “broken neck,” a detail that aligns with the mechanism one would expect when a benchman is hit by a descending mass of rock: a sudden, high-energy impact from above that allows little margin for evasive action. McClellan lingered for roughly two days, dying on Thursday, July 22, 1926, before he could be transported to Denver for more complete care. Other sources stated that he “died last week from injuries sustained in the Moffat tunnel, when he was caught under a falling rock”—a compressed version of the same event. He was a Denver native who attended Manuel Training High School, and his death reverberated through an extended family network: his wife (living with her mother, Mrs. P. Nielson, at 4892 Knox Court), his half-brother F. H. Evans of Denver, and a sister, Mrs. J. E. Shryark of Genoa. The decision to bury him at Fairmount Cemetery reflects the family’s Denver roots and the impulse to return tunnel workers home whenever possible—a theme that threads through many of the 1926 fatalities and underscores the human cost borne far from public view.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Ralph McClellan, please let us know.

#32 | 1926 | John Adams

• Age: 50
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): shift boss
• Date of Death: Friday, July 30, 1926
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (fall of rock)
• Medical Cause: crush trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Walsenburg Masonic Cemetery, Walsenburg, Colorado (cemetery ledger records “John Adams, born 1875, died 1925”—the year of death is almost certainly a clerical error for 1926)
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 89010736
• Other Information: Newspapers identified the victim as John Adams of Walsenburg, employed as a shift boss. While “John Adams” is a common name, burial searches at Denver’s principal cemeteries that frequently received Moffat Tunnel fatalities (Crown Hill, Riverside, Fairmount, etc.) yielded no matching records. By contrast, the Walsenburg Masonic Cemetery register lists a John Adams with the correct birth year (1875) and age (50). The single-year discrepancy in the death date is best explained as a clerical error, a known issue in early cemetery ledgers. Although absolute confirmation would benefit from a headstone inscription, obituary, or deed, the convergence of age, name, residence, and the absence of records in the Denver cemeteries makes it historically defensible to conclude that John Adams, killed in the 1926 tunnel collapse, is buried in the Walsenburg Masonic Cemetery.
• Just before noon, the inside jumbo crew—only five men that shift—was installing temporary timbering in the widened bench of the main bore, forty-three feet from the tunnel heading and roughly 12,000 feet inside the mountain. The heading at that point had been driven at the usual eight-by-eight-foot dimension, and crews were performing the regular enlargement process—first widening it to sixteen feet and then heightening it to eighteen. According to Martin Green, assistant superintendent, this enlarging process had loosened a large mass of rock above the tunnel. He had inspected the timber set minutes earlier and noticed one side sagging; under his direction, that side had been hastily repaired. But as crews turned to reinforce the opposite side, the remaining overhead mass gave way “with a roar,” sending more than 100-125 tons of rock and splintered timbers down onto the men on their scaffolding. Witnesses confirmed the crew had no warning: the rock crashed through the timbers that had been set to protect them, burying the five men “like mice in a trap.” The last shift rotation before the collapse adds an element of tragic contingency. William E. Pierson, one of the victims, had originally refused a reassignment earlier that morning; he wanted to stay beside his friend Jim. Green eventually persuaded him to change crews only after assuring him that the companion arrangement would be restored the next day. Pierson agreed—without knowing that the decision would place him inside the doomed jumbo set. In contrast, John Adams, Jr., the locomotive operator and son of the shift boss, narrowly escaped. He had been standing several yards behind the crew, operating an electric engine that had been backed into the tunnel but not yet pushed close enough for muckers to fill the cars. When the roof caved, he caught a final glimpse of his father in the swirl of falling debris before the rock obliterated the timbering. He was unhurt solely because his engine had not yet advanced to the working face. Rescue efforts intensified as the scale of the collapse became evident. Workers feared there might even be additional victims—perhaps one or two men not officially on shift—though this possibility was never confirmed. Inside the tunnel, picked crews of forty men tore at the rock pile in short, frantic shifts, returning to the surface exhausted. Their task was complicated by tons of rock still hanging overhead, requiring careful additional timbering before each advance. Yet many rescuers, like Martin Green, Troy Brannigan, and Robert Lall, repeatedly crawled into unstable voids despite the danger. Green himself had just completed an inspection of the Clear Creek district and was headed for Denver by train when he received the news; he arrived at West Portal immediately by automobile and entered the bore almost continuously thereafter. Within minutes of the collapse, Green, Brannigan, and Lall burrowed through shattered timbers to reach H. T. Thompson, the only man pulled alive from the debris. Thompson had been pinned under several boulders closer to the tunnel entrance and remained conscious into the evening, telling Dr. McDonald that he heard someone yell “look out,” saw a companion fall at his feet, and then felt everything go black. His leg was twisted at a right angle. Despite rescue, he died later that night, his father and brother at his bedside. As the digging progressed, the first grim signs of proximity—fragments of two pencils and a garter—spurred workers to greater efforts. Assistant superintendent Charles Miller eventually forced his way past a narrow section of debris and located the first bodies: Park Gasaway lying slightly in advance of the others, followed by pairs of legs and an arm protruding from broken timbers several feet apart. Gasaway’s head and body had been crushed so completely that death was unquestionably instantaneous. Each body was removed under extreme hazard. Gasaway’s was brought to the portal around 11pm, greeted by a silent crowd that had gathered continuously at the entrance. The little schoolhouse at West Portal continued to serve as a temporary morgue, where Dr. Susan Anderson (Doc Susie) and state mine inspector Thomas R. Henahen examined each victim. Identification was complicated by crushed features and missing brass tags; one man was identified only by a paycheck found in his pocket. Pierson had a wife believed to be living in Denver. Parosek had arrived at the tunnel only the day before and worked just one and one-half shifts before being killed; his nearest relative was Frank Poceal of Denver. Ferguson’s mother lived in Vivian, Virginia; he had been at the tunnel only four days. Gasaway had come to Denver from the Oklahoma oil fields and had lived for several years in Salt Lake City; his family was believed to reside in Indianapolis. Local police telegraphed Indianapolis authorities in an effort to reach his parents. Thompson, the lone survivor who later died, was from Fort Collins, and his entire family—father, brother, and sisters—were notified and came to his bedside. Throughout the night and into the following days, state and federal officials converged on West Portal. Commissioner of Mines J. T. Joyce, District Engineer E. H. Cenny of the federal Bureau of Mines, and Coroner Anderson all assessed the conditions, and Joyce announced that his office would conduct a rigid investigation. All three assistant superintendents stated that every possible precaution to protect the workers had been taken and that nothing more could reasonably have been done to prevent the accident. Correspondingly, state commissioner Joyce described the slide as an “unavoidable accident,” noting that all the timbers possible had been put into the jumbo set. The directing officials—Hitchcock, Tinkler, Kauffman, Cohig, Betts, and others—remained on site continuously to supervise the rescue, ensure no additional men were endangered, and maintain careful timbering before each renewed digging effort.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about John Adams, please let us know.

#33 | 1926 | Henry Ferguson

• Age: 48
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Friday, July 30, 1926
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (fall of rock)
• Medical Cause: crush trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Vivian, Louisiana (unknown)
• Headstone: Town location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 291554588
• Other Information: Just before noon, the inside jumbo crew—only five men that shift—was installing temporary timbering in the widened bench of the main bore, forty-three feet from the tunnel heading and roughly 12,000 feet inside the mountain. The heading at that point had been driven at the usual eight-by-eight-foot dimension, and crews were performing the regular enlargement process—first widening it to sixteen feet and then heightening it to eighteen. According to Martin Green, assistant superintendent, this enlarging process had loosened a large mass of rock above the tunnel. He had inspected the timber set minutes earlier and noticed one side sagging; under his direction, that side had been hastily repaired. But as crews turned to reinforce the opposite side, the remaining overhead mass gave way “with a roar,” sending more than 100-125 tons of rock and splintered timbers down onto the men on their scaffolding. Witnesses confirmed the crew had no warning: the rock crashed through the timbers that had been set to protect them, burying the five men “like mice in a trap.” The last shift rotation before the collapse adds an element of tragic contingency. William E. Pierson, one of the victims, had originally refused a reassignment earlier that morning; he wanted to stay beside his friend Jim. Green eventually persuaded him to change crews only after assuring him that the companion arrangement would be restored the next day. Pierson agreed—without knowing that the decision would place him inside the doomed jumbo set. In contrast, John Adams, Jr., the locomotive operator and son of the shift boss, narrowly escaped. He had been standing several yards behind the crew, operating an electric engine that had been backed into the tunnel but not yet pushed close enough for muckers to fill the cars. When the roof caved, he caught a final glimpse of his father in the swirl of falling debris before the rock obliterated the timbering. He was unhurt solely because his engine had not yet advanced to the working face. Rescue efforts intensified as the scale of the collapse became evident. Workers feared there might even be additional victims—perhaps one or two men not officially on shift—though this possibility was never confirmed. Inside the tunnel, picked crews of forty men tore at the rock pile in short, frantic shifts, returning to the surface exhausted. Their task was complicated by tons of rock still hanging overhead, requiring careful additional timbering before each advance. Yet many rescuers, like Martin Green, Troy Brannigan, and Robert Lall, repeatedly crawled into unstable voids despite the danger. Green himself had just completed an inspection of the Clear Creek district and was headed for Denver by train when he received the news; he arrived at West Portal immediately by automobile and entered the bore almost continuously thereafter. Within minutes of the collapse, Green, Brannigan, and Lall burrowed through shattered timbers to reach H. T. Thompson, the only man pulled alive from the debris. Thompson had been pinned under several boulders closer to the tunnel entrance and remained conscious into the evening, telling Dr. McDonald that he heard someone yell “look out,” saw a companion fall at his feet, and then felt everything go black. His leg was twisted at a right angle. Despite rescue, he died later that night, his father and brother at his bedside. As the digging progressed, the first grim signs of proximity—fragments of two pencils and a garter—spurred workers to greater efforts. Assistant superintendent Charles Miller eventually forced his way past a narrow section of debris and located the first bodies: Park Gasaway lying slightly in advance of the others, followed by pairs of legs and an arm protruding from broken timbers several feet apart. Gasaway’s head and body had been crushed so completely that death was unquestionably instantaneous. Each body was removed under extreme hazard. Gasaway’s was brought to the portal around 11pm, greeted by a silent crowd that had gathered continuously at the entrance. The little schoolhouse at West Portal continued to serve as a temporary morgue, where Dr. Susan Anderson (Doc Susie) and state mine inspector Thomas R. Henahen examined each victim. Identification was complicated by crushed features and missing brass tags; one man was identified only by a paycheck found in his pocket. Pierson had a wife believed to be living in Denver. Parosek had arrived at the tunnel only the day before and worked just one and one-half shifts before being killed; his nearest relative was Frank Poceal of Denver. Ferguson’s mother lived in Vivian, Virginia; he had been at the tunnel only four days. Gasaway had come to Denver from the Oklahoma oil fields and had lived for several years in Salt Lake City; his family was believed to reside in Indianapolis. Local police telegraphed Indianapolis authorities in an effort to reach his parents. Thompson, the lone survivor who later died, was from Fort Collins, and his entire family—father, brother, and sisters—were notified and came to his bedside. Throughout the night and into the following days, state and federal officials converged on West Portal. Commissioner of Mines J. T. Joyce, District Engineer E. H. Cenny of the federal Bureau of Mines, and Coroner Anderson all assessed the conditions, and Joyce announced that his office would conduct a rigid investigation. All three assistant superintendents stated that every possible precaution to protect the workers had been taken and that nothing more could reasonably have been done to prevent the accident. Correspondingly, state commissioner Joyce described the slide as an “unavoidable accident,” noting that all the timbers possible had been put into the jumbo set. The directing officials—Hitchcock, Tinkler, Kauffman, Cohig, Betts, and others—remained on site continuously to supervise the rescue, ensure no additional men were endangered, and maintain careful timbering before each renewed digging effort.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Harry
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Henry Ferguson, please let us know.

#34 | 1926 | Park A. Gasaway

• Age: 42
• Birth: Monday, March 24, 1884 in Rockville, Indiana
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Friday, July 30, 1926
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (fall of rock)
• Medical Cause: crush trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Vinzant Cemetery, Indiana | Jackson Township, Section 26
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 35020829
• Other Information: Just before noon, the inside jumbo crew—only five men that shift—was installing temporary timbering in the widened bench of the main bore, forty-three feet from the tunnel heading and roughly 12,000 feet inside the mountain. The heading at that point had been driven at the usual eight-by-eight-foot dimension, and crews were performing the regular enlargement process—first widening it to sixteen feet and then heightening it to eighteen. According to Martin Green, assistant superintendent, this enlarging process had loosened a large mass of rock above the tunnel. He had inspected the timber set minutes earlier and noticed one side sagging; under his direction, that side had been hastily repaired. But as crews turned to reinforce the opposite side, the remaining overhead mass gave way “with a roar,” sending more than 100-125 tons of rock and splintered timbers down onto the men on their scaffolding. Witnesses confirmed the crew had no warning: the rock crashed through the timbers that had been set to protect them, burying the five men “like mice in a trap.” The last shift rotation before the collapse adds an element of tragic contingency. William E. Pierson, one of the victims, had originally refused a reassignment earlier that morning; he wanted to stay beside his friend Jim. Green eventually persuaded him to change crews only after assuring him that the companion arrangement would be restored the next day. Pierson agreed—without knowing that the decision would place him inside the doomed jumbo set. In contrast, John Adams, Jr., the locomotive operator and son of the shift boss, narrowly escaped. He had been standing several yards behind the crew, operating an electric engine that had been backed into the tunnel but not yet pushed close enough for muckers to fill the cars. When the roof caved, he caught a final glimpse of his father in the swirl of falling debris before the rock obliterated the timbering. He was unhurt solely because his engine had not yet advanced to the working face. Rescue efforts intensified as the scale of the collapse became evident. Workers feared there might even be additional victims—perhaps one or two men not officially on shift—though this possibility was never confirmed. Inside the tunnel, picked crews of forty men tore at the rock pile in short, frantic shifts, returning to the surface exhausted. Their task was complicated by tons of rock still hanging overhead, requiring careful additional timbering before each advance. Yet many rescuers, like Martin Green, Troy Brannigan, and Robert Lall, repeatedly crawled into unstable voids despite the danger. Green himself had just completed an inspection of the Clear Creek district and was headed for Denver by train when he received the news; he arrived at West Portal immediately by automobile and entered the bore almost continuously thereafter. Within minutes of the collapse, Green, Brannigan, and Lall burrowed through shattered timbers to reach H. T. Thompson, the only man pulled alive from the debris. Thompson had been pinned under several boulders closer to the tunnel entrance and remained conscious into the evening, telling Dr. McDonald that he heard someone yell “look out,” saw a companion fall at his feet, and then felt everything go black. His leg was twisted at a right angle. Despite rescue, he died later that night, his father and brother at his bedside. As the digging progressed, the first grim signs of proximity—fragments of two pencils and a garter—spurred workers to greater efforts. Assistant superintendent Charles Miller eventually forced his way past a narrow section of debris and located the first bodies: Park Gasaway lying slightly in advance of the others, followed by pairs of legs and an arm protruding from broken timbers several feet apart. Gasaway’s head and body had been crushed so completely that death was unquestionably instantaneous. Each body was removed under extreme hazard. Gasaway’s was brought to the portal around 11pm, greeted by a silent crowd that had gathered continuously at the entrance. The little schoolhouse at West Portal continued to serve as a temporary morgue, where Dr. Susan Anderson (Doc Susie) and state mine inspector Thomas R. Henahen examined each victim. Identification was complicated by crushed features and missing brass tags; one man was identified only by a paycheck found in his pocket. Pierson had a wife believed to be living in Denver. Parosek had arrived at the tunnel only the day before and worked just one and one-half shifts before being killed; his nearest relative was Frank Poceal of Denver. Ferguson’s mother lived in Vivian, Virginia; he had been at the tunnel only four days. Gasaway had come to Denver from the Oklahoma oil fields and had lived for several years in Salt Lake City; his family was believed to reside in Indianapolis. Local police telegraphed Indianapolis authorities in an effort to reach his parents. Thompson, the lone survivor who later died, was from Fort Collins, and his entire family—father, brother, and sisters—were notified and came to his bedside. Throughout the night and into the following days, state and federal officials converged on West Portal. Commissioner of Mines J. T. Joyce, District Engineer E. H. Cenny of the federal Bureau of Mines, and Coroner Anderson all assessed the conditions, and Joyce announced that his office would conduct a rigid investigation. All three assistant superintendents stated that every possible precaution to protect the workers had been taken and that nothing more could reasonably have been done to prevent the accident. Correspondingly, state commissioner Joyce described the slide as an “unavoidable accident,” noting that all the timbers possible had been put into the jumbo set. The directing officials—Hitchcock, Tinkler, Kauffman, Cohig, Betts, and others—remained on site continuously to supervise the rescue, ensure no additional men were endangered, and maintain careful timbering before each renewed digging effort.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Gassoway, Gasoway, Parke, Pat, Patrick, or Peter
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Park A. Gasaway, please let us know.

#35 | 1926 | William E. Pierson

• Age: 39
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Friday, July 30, 1926
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (fall of rock)
• Medical Cause: crush trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Westlawn-Hillcrest Memorial Park, Omaha, Nebraska | Section 23, Lot 158-A, Space 3
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 291554225
• Other Information: Heartbreakingly, William Pierson’s first day on the job was also his last. Just before noon, the inside jumbo crew—only five men that shift—was installing temporary timbering in the widened bench of the main bore, forty-three feet from the tunnel heading and roughly 12,000 feet inside the mountain. The heading at that point had been driven at the usual eight-by-eight-foot dimension, and crews were performing the regular enlargement process—first widening it to sixteen feet and then heightening it to eighteen. According to Martin Green, assistant superintendent, this enlarging process had loosened a large mass of rock above the tunnel. He had inspected the timber set minutes earlier and noticed one side sagging; under his direction, that side had been hastily repaired. But as crews turned to reinforce the opposite side, the remaining overhead mass gave way “with a roar,” sending more than 100-125 tons of rock and splintered timbers down onto the men on their scaffolding. Witnesses confirmed the crew had no warning: the rock crashed through the timbers that had been set to protect them, burying the five men “like mice in a trap.” The last shift rotation before the collapse adds an element of tragic contingency. William E. Pierson, one of the victims, had originally refused a reassignment earlier that morning; he wanted to stay beside his friend Jim. Green eventually persuaded him to change crews only after assuring him that the companion arrangement would be restored the next day. Pierson agreed—without knowing that the decision would place him inside the doomed jumbo set. In contrast, John Adams, Jr., the locomotive operator and son of the shift boss, narrowly escaped. He had been standing several yards behind the crew, operating an electric engine that had been backed into the tunnel but not yet pushed close enough for muckers to fill the cars. When the roof caved, he caught a final glimpse of his father in the swirl of falling debris before the rock obliterated the timbering. He was unhurt solely because his engine had not yet advanced to the working face. Rescue efforts intensified as the scale of the collapse became evident. Workers feared there might even be additional victims—perhaps one or two men not officially on shift—though this possibility was never confirmed. Inside the tunnel, picked crews of forty men tore at the rock pile in short, frantic shifts, returning to the surface exhausted. Their task was complicated by tons of rock still hanging overhead, requiring careful additional timbering before each advance. Yet many rescuers, like Martin Green, Troy Brannigan, and Robert Lall, repeatedly crawled into unstable voids despite the danger. Green himself had just completed an inspection of the Clear Creek district and was headed for Denver by train when he received the news; he arrived at West Portal immediately by automobile and entered the bore almost continuously thereafter. Within minutes of the collapse, Green, Brannigan, and Lall burrowed through shattered timbers to reach H. T. Thompson, the only man pulled alive from the debris. Thompson had been pinned under several boulders closer to the tunnel entrance and remained conscious into the evening, telling Dr. McDonald that he heard someone yell “look out,” saw a companion fall at his feet, and then felt everything go black. His leg was twisted at a right angle. Despite rescue, he died later that night, his father and brother at his bedside. As the digging progressed, the first grim signs of proximity—fragments of two pencils and a garter—spurred workers to greater efforts. Assistant superintendent Charles Miller eventually forced his way past a narrow section of debris and located the first bodies: Park Gasaway lying slightly in advance of the others, followed by pairs of legs and an arm protruding from broken timbers several feet apart. Gasaway’s head and body had been crushed so completely that death was unquestionably instantaneous. Each body was removed under extreme hazard. Gasaway’s was brought to the portal around 11pm, greeted by a silent crowd that had gathered continuously at the entrance. The little schoolhouse at West Portal continued to serve as a temporary morgue, where Dr. Susan Anderson (Doc Susie) and state mine inspector Thomas R. Henahen examined each victim. Identification was complicated by crushed features and missing brass tags; one man was identified only by a paycheck found in his pocket. Pierson had a wife believed to be living in Denver. Parosek had arrived at the tunnel only the day before and worked just one and one-half shifts before being killed; his nearest relative was Frank Poceal of Denver. Ferguson’s mother lived in Vivian, Virginia; he had been at the tunnel only four days. Gasaway had come to Denver from the Oklahoma oil fields and had lived for several years in Salt Lake City; his family was believed to reside in Indianapolis. Local police telegraphed Indianapolis authorities in an effort to reach his parents. Thompson, the lone survivor who later died, was from Fort Collins, and his entire family—father, brother, and sisters—were notified and came to his bedside. Throughout the night and into the following days, state and federal officials converged on West Portal. Commissioner of Mines J. T. Joyce, District Engineer E. H. Cenny of the federal Bureau of Mines, and Coroner Anderson all assessed the conditions, and Joyce announced that his office would conduct a rigid investigation. All three assistant superintendents stated that every possible precaution to protect the workers had been taken and that nothing more could reasonably have been done to prevent the accident. Correspondingly, state commissioner Joyce described the slide as an “unavoidable accident,” noting that all the timbers possible had been put into the jumbo set. The directing officials—Hitchcock, Tinkler, Kauffman, Cohig, Betts, and others—remained on site continuously to supervise the rescue, ensure no additional men were endangered, and maintain careful timbering before each renewed digging effort.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): William Pearson, Piersn
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about William E. Pierson, please let us know.

#36 | 1926 | John Parosek

• Age: 48
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Friday, July 30, 1926
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (fall of rock)
• Medical Cause: crush trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | 12-7-0-20
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 283629530
• Other Information: Just before noon, the inside jumbo crew—only five men that shift—was installing temporary timbering in the widened bench of the main bore, forty-three feet from the tunnel heading and roughly 12,000 feet inside the mountain. The heading at that point had been driven at the usual eight-by-eight-foot dimension, and crews were performing the regular enlargement process—first widening it to sixteen feet and then heightening it to eighteen. According to Martin Green, assistant superintendent, this enlarging process had loosened a large mass of rock above the tunnel. He had inspected the timber set minutes earlier and noticed one side sagging; under his direction, that side had been hastily repaired. But as crews turned to reinforce the opposite side, the remaining overhead mass gave way “with a roar,” sending more than 100-125 tons of rock and splintered timbers down onto the men on their scaffolding. Witnesses confirmed the crew had no warning: the rock crashed through the timbers that had been set to protect them, burying the five men “like mice in a trap.” The last shift rotation before the collapse adds an element of tragic contingency. William E. Pierson, one of the victims, had originally refused a reassignment earlier that morning; he wanted to stay beside his friend Jim. Green eventually persuaded him to change crews only after assuring him that the companion arrangement would be restored the next day. Pierson agreed—without knowing that the decision would place him inside the doomed jumbo set. In contrast, John Adams, Jr., the locomotive operator and son of the shift boss, narrowly escaped. He had been standing several yards behind the crew, operating an electric engine that had been backed into the tunnel but not yet pushed close enough for muckers to fill the cars. When the roof caved, he caught a final glimpse of his father in the swirl of falling debris before the rock obliterated the timbering. He was unhurt solely because his engine had not yet advanced to the working face. Rescue efforts intensified as the scale of the collapse became evident. Workers feared there might even be additional victims—perhaps one or two men not officially on shift—though this possibility was never confirmed. Inside the tunnel, picked crews of forty men tore at the rock pile in short, frantic shifts, returning to the surface exhausted. Their task was complicated by tons of rock still hanging overhead, requiring careful additional timbering before each advance. Yet many rescuers, like Martin Green, Troy Brannigan, and Robert Lall, repeatedly crawled into unstable voids despite the danger. Green himself had just completed an inspection of the Clear Creek district and was headed for Denver by train when he received the news; he arrived at West Portal immediately by automobile and entered the bore almost continuously thereafter. Within minutes of the collapse, Green, Brannigan, and Lall burrowed through shattered timbers to reach H. T. Thompson, the only man pulled alive from the debris. Thompson had been pinned under several boulders closer to the tunnel entrance and remained conscious into the evening, telling Dr. McDonald that he heard someone yell “look out,” saw a companion fall at his feet, and then felt everything go black. His leg was twisted at a right angle. Despite rescue, he died later that night, his father and brother at his bedside. As the digging progressed, the first grim signs of proximity—fragments of two pencils and a garter—spurred workers to greater efforts. Assistant superintendent Charles Miller eventually forced his way past a narrow section of debris and located the first bodies: Park Gasaway lying slightly in advance of the others, followed by pairs of legs and an arm protruding from broken timbers several feet apart. Gasaway’s head and body had been crushed so completely that death was unquestionably instantaneous. Each body was removed under extreme hazard. Gasaway’s was brought to the portal around 11pm, greeted by a silent crowd that had gathered continuously at the entrance. The little schoolhouse at West Portal continued to serve as a temporary morgue, where Dr. Susan Anderson (Doc Susie) and state mine inspector Thomas R. Henahen examined each victim. Identification was complicated by crushed features and missing brass tags; one man was identified only by a paycheck found in his pocket. Pierson had a wife believed to be living in Denver. Parosek had arrived at the tunnel only the day before and worked just one and one-half shifts before being killed; his nearest relative was Frank Poceal of Denver. Ferguson’s mother lived in Vivian, Virginia; he had been at the tunnel only four days. Gasaway had come to Denver from the Oklahoma oil fields and had lived for several years in Salt Lake City; his family was believed to reside in Indianapolis. Local police telegraphed Indianapolis authorities in an effort to reach his parents. Thompson, the lone survivor who later died, was from Fort Collins, and his entire family—father, brother, and sisters—were notified and came to his bedside. Throughout the night and into the following days, state and federal officials converged on West Portal. Commissioner of Mines J. T. Joyce, District Engineer E. H. Cenny of the federal Bureau of Mines, and Coroner Anderson all assessed the conditions, and Joyce announced that his office would conduct a rigid investigation. All three assistant superintendents stated that every possible precaution to protect the workers had been taken and that nothing more could reasonably have been done to prevent the accident. Correspondingly, state commissioner Joyce described the slide as an “unavoidable accident,” noting that all the timbers possible had been put into the jumbo set. The directing officials—Hitchcock, Tinkler, Kauffman, Cohig, Betts, and others—remained on site continuously to supervise the rescue, ensure no additional men were endangered, and maintain careful timbering before each renewed digging effort.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): John Prosek or John Proske
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about John Parosek, please let us know.

#37 | 1926 | Hartzel T. Thompson

• Age: 20-21
• Birth: 1905 in Meeker, Colorado
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): mucker
• Date of Death: Friday, July 30, 1926
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (fall of rock)
• Medical Cause: crush trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Meeker Highland Cemetery, Meeker, Colorado | Highland C, West 22
• Headstone: Monument located and confirmed.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 57627998
• Other Information: Just before noon, the inside jumbo crew—only five men that shift—was installing temporary timbering in the widened bench of the main bore, forty-three feet from the tunnel heading and roughly 12,000 feet inside the mountain. The heading at that point had been driven at the usual eight-by-eight-foot dimension, and crews were performing the regular enlargement process—first widening it to sixteen feet and then heightening it to eighteen. According to Martin Green, assistant superintendent, this enlarging process had loosened a large mass of rock above the tunnel. He had inspected the timber set minutes earlier and noticed one side sagging; under his direction, that side had been hastily repaired. But as crews turned to reinforce the opposite side, the remaining overhead mass gave way “with a roar,” sending more than 100-125 tons of rock and splintered timbers down onto the men on their scaffolding. Witnesses confirmed the crew had no warning: the rock crashed through the timbers that had been set to protect them, burying the five men “like mice in a trap.” The last shift rotation before the collapse adds an element of tragic contingency. William E. Pierson, one of the victims, had originally refused a reassignment earlier that morning; he wanted to stay beside his friend Jim. Green eventually persuaded him to change crews only after assuring him that the companion arrangement would be restored the next day. Pierson agreed—without knowing that the decision would place him inside the doomed jumbo set. In contrast, John Adams, Jr., the locomotive operator and son of the shift boss, narrowly escaped. He had been standing several yards behind the crew, operating an electric engine that had been backed into the tunnel but not yet pushed close enough for muckers to fill the cars. When the roof caved, he caught a final glimpse of his father in the swirl of falling debris before the rock obliterated the timbering. He was unhurt solely because his engine had not yet advanced to the working face. Rescue efforts intensified as the scale of the collapse became evident. Workers feared there might even be additional victims—perhaps one or two men not officially on shift—though this possibility was never confirmed. Inside the tunnel, picked crews of forty men tore at the rock pile in short, frantic shifts, returning to the surface exhausted. Their task was complicated by tons of rock still hanging overhead, requiring careful additional timbering before each advance. Yet many rescuers, like Martin Green, Troy Brannigan, and Robert Lall, repeatedly crawled into unstable voids despite the danger. Green himself had just completed an inspection of the Clear Creek district and was headed for Denver by train when he received the news; he arrived at West Portal immediately by automobile and entered the bore almost continuously thereafter. Within minutes of the collapse, Green, Brannigan, and Lall burrowed through shattered timbers to reach H. T. Thompson, the only man pulled alive from the debris. Thompson had been pinned under several boulders closer to the tunnel entrance and remained conscious into the evening, telling Dr. McDonald that he heard someone yell “look out,” saw a companion fall at his feet, and then felt everything go black. His leg was twisted at a right angle. Despite rescue, he died later that night, his father and brother at his bedside. As the digging progressed, the first grim signs of proximity—fragments of two pencils and a garter—spurred workers to greater efforts. Assistant superintendent Charles Miller eventually forced his way past a narrow section of debris and located the first bodies: Park Gasaway lying slightly in advance of the others, followed by pairs of legs and an arm protruding from broken timbers several feet apart. Gasaway’s head and body had been crushed so completely that death was unquestionably instantaneous. Each body was removed under extreme hazard. Gasaway’s was brought to the portal around 11pm, greeted by a silent crowd that had gathered continuously at the entrance. The little schoolhouse at West Portal continued to serve as a temporary morgue, where Dr. Susan Anderson (Doc Susie) and state mine inspector Thomas R. Henahen examined each victim. Identification was complicated by crushed features and missing brass tags; one man was identified only by a paycheck found in his pocket. Pierson had a wife believed to be living in Denver. Parosek had arrived at the tunnel only the day before and worked just one and one-half shifts before being killed; his nearest relative was Frank Poceal of Denver. Ferguson’s mother lived in Vivian, Virginia; he had been at the tunnel only four days. Gasaway had come to Denver from the Oklahoma oil fields and had lived for several years in Salt Lake City; his family was believed to reside in Indianapolis. Local police telegraphed Indianapolis authorities in an effort to reach his parents. Thompson, the lone survivor who later died, was from Fort Collins, and his entire family—father, brother, and sisters—were notified and came to his bedside. Throughout the night and into the following days, state and federal officials converged on West Portal. Commissioner of Mines J. T. Joyce, District Engineer E. H. Cenny of the federal Bureau of Mines, and Coroner Anderson all assessed the conditions, and Joyce announced that his office would conduct a rigid investigation. All three assistant superintendents stated that every possible precaution to protect the workers had been taken and that nothing more could reasonably have been done to prevent the accident. Correspondingly, state commissioner Joyce described the slide as an “unavoidable accident,” noting that all the timbers possible had been put into the jumbo set. The directing officials—Hitchcock, Tinkler, Kauffman, Cohig, Betts, and others—remained on site continuously to supervise the rescue, ensure no additional men were endangered, and maintain careful timbering before each renewed digging effort.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Hartsell, Hartsel, Hartzell Compson
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Hartzel T. Thompson, please let us know.

#38 | 1926 | George Shores

• Age: 21
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): brakeman
• Date of Death: Thursday, October 14, 1926
• Mechanism (event): fall from moving equipment (fell from an electric motor/tunnel car)
• Medical Cause: multiple trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 14, Lot 9, Section 31, no headstone/unmarked
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 285709990
• Other Information: George Shores, 21, a Denver brakeman who had been working at the Moffat Tunnel for several months, was killed almost instantly at the East Portal when he fell from a swaying electric tunnel car as it entered the bore. Coworkers reported that he had stood up on the moving car just as it lurched, lost his balance, and fell—his head striking the rocks with enough force to fracture his skull. The crew stopped the car and ran back to him, but he died as they reached him.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): George Fhores, Foers, Forest, Phores
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about George Shores, please let us know.

#39 | 1926 | George Dewey Fortune

• Age: 29
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): chuck tender
• Date of Death: Monday, November 1, 1926
• Mechanism (event): fall of ground (fall of rock)
• Medical Cause: crush trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 15, Plot 66, Grave 27
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 291554109
• Other Information: George Fortune was a twenty-nine-year-old chuck tender working with the drill crew at West Portal when a sudden fall of rock ended his life on November 1, 1926. According to the Colorado Bureau of Mines’ annual report for that year, the crew had nearly completed drilling a round of holes at the tunnel breast when a slab detached without warning, crushing Fortune beneath it. He survived the initial blow but died within hours. Investigators concluded there was “no reason to suspect that the ground was unsafe,” and therefore classified the event as unavoidable. That phrasing—common in early twentieth-century mine-safety reporting—signals not that conditions were demonstrably safe, but that no contemporaneous evidence documented visible instability. In a heading where vibration, natural fracturing, and incremental stress could destabilize rock invisibly, “unavoidable” reflects the limits of what inspectors believed they could assess, not a definitive statement about geology. Fortune lived at 2928 Arapahoe Street in Denver and was married to Sadie Fortune, whose life changed abruptly with the news from West Portal. His death notices in the metropolitan papers carried a date of November 3. That discrepancy, when compared to the Mines report’s November 1, likely reflects the routine lag between a remote industrial fatality, formal notification, transport, and the timing of obituary submission. In contrast to many other accident deaths at the Moffat Tunnel—where newspapers described circumstances, named witnesses, or reproduced statements—no surviving article has been located that reports the details of Fortune’s accident itself. Only the brief obituary items appear in the press. That silence is crucial: when typical journalistic traces are missing, the official record assumes even greater evidentiary weight, while also reminding us how fragile the documentary landscape can be. What we know about his final day rests almost entirely on the Mines report’s concise account. Fortune’s death fits a broader pattern that year: well-trained crews working in a highly disciplined environment could still be overtaken by small, sudden geological failures. The drill crew had nearly finished their task, and nothing in the record suggests visible danger. Yet a single slab falling from the breast dictated the outcome. For historians reconstructing the full human cost of the Moffat Tunnel project, the sparseness of coverage in this case underscores an uncomfortable truth—some tragedies left only skeletal traces. In documenting them, precision requires acknowledging both the facts we can confirm and the contours of what has disappeared from view.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about George Dewey Fortune, please let us know.

#40 | 1926 | Frank Bird Pierce

• Age: 48
• Birth: Saturday, August 17, 1878 in Bentonville, Arkansas
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Saturday, November 20, 1926
• Mechanism (event): engine fell from a [dump] trestle that was weakened by precipitation
• Medical Cause: crush trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 22, Plot 121, Grave 1
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 57806604
• Other Information: Frank Bird Pierce, son of Samuel Vinton Pierce and Clara Isadore Guss, built a life marked by reinvention and quiet resilience. At twenty-two he was already working as a “railroad man” in Waco’s Ward 3, and that same city is where he married Grace Marie Herndon on September 1, 1900. Their first two sons arrived in 1901 and 1906, and by 1910—now thirty-two—Frank had shifted into running a furniture store, even as the couple endured the loss of their one-year-old son, Frank B. Jr., in 1911. In the years that followed, two more sons—Robert Prescott and Elbert Isadore—joined the family. By the time of the 1920 census, Frank was working as a checker in a laundry while raising four surviving boys. Sometime after that count, the family left Texas for Colorado, where Frank returned to railroad work as a brakeman. Given the timing and the location, that assignment almost certainly placed him within the sprawling industrial plant surrounding the west side of the Moffat Tunnel construction project—a landscape of temporary sidings, dump trestles, spoil tracks, and light industrial locomotives (the Moffat Tunnel team called these ‘dinkys’) distinct from the established Denver & Salt Lake Railroad mainline that already served West Portal via Rollins Pass. On November 20, 1926, one of the small construction locomotives used in that work went down when a dump trestle failed, and the falling engine killed Frank. Contemporary reports do not specify whether he was riding the locomotive or working alongside it when the structure collapsed, only that the engine’s fall proved fatal. A collapse of this type was not unprecedented during the tunnel era: at East Portal, a similar failure of temporary construction trackage occurred earlier in the project, underscoring how vulnerable these provisional structures were to the kinds of construction stresses—variable ground conditions, freeze–thaw cycles, and heavy localized loads—that routinely challenged tunnel-camp infrastructure. Frank’s death on the west side fits that same pattern of construction hazards rather than anything involving the permanent railroad. He was only forty-eight. Grace lived until 1972 and never remarried.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Frank Bird Pierce, please let us know.

#41 | 1926 | Harley Smith

• Age: 27-28
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Thursday, December 9, 1926
• Mechanism (event): unknown
• Medical Cause: unknown
• Manner: undetermined
• Burial: Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 14, Lot 9, Section 33, no headstone/unmarked
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 285709991
• Other Information: Harley Smith died in early December 1926 at West Portal, Colorado, at just twenty-eight years of age. His death was publicly noted in The Rocky Mountain News on December 9, 1926, which identified him as the beloved husband of Alma Smith and announced that funeral services would be held that same day at Thompson’s Chapel at 10 a.m., followed by burial at Riverside Cemetery. Riverside’s interment ledger precisely corroborates that notice, recording his burial on December 9, 1926, in Block 14, Lot 9. No surviving newspaper coverage or cemetery documentation expands on the cause or circumstances of his death, which—given his young age and the hazardous context of West Portal employment—leaves a critical gap in the historical record.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Harley Smith, please let us know.

#42 | 1926 | Charles Frederick Billings

• Age: 52
• Birth: Monday, July 6, 1874 in Golden, Colorado
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Monday, December 13, 1926
• Mechanism (event): exposure/respiratory
• Medical Cause: pneumonia
• Manner: natural (occupational illness)
• Burial: Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 22, Lot 39, Grave 4
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 32429817
• Other Information: Charles Frederick Billings—listed in contemporary newspapers as Charles F. Billings—was born in 1874 in Golden, Colorado, to Samuel and Mary Billings. By the late 1890s he was working as a miner and living in Telluride, where his musical life intersected with his personal one: he played violin in an orchestra and met Bessie Estelle Songer while she attended a performance. The two were married on October 12, 1898, in Telluride, and raised three children—Freda, Frederick, and Myrtle. Family tradition preserves unusually vivid details of Billings’s physical presence and character, describing him as five feet eight inches tall and 160 pounds in 1914, an image grounded in the measurements recorded in his own diary rather than later recollection. By the mid-1920s, Billings was again engaged in hard labor, this time in connection with construction of the Moffat Tunnel. During this period he stayed at West Portal with his sister, Carrie Gallagher, and her husband, Joe Gallagher, the tunnel’s superintendent—a relationship independently confirmed by his 1926 funeral notice, which lists Mrs. J. H. Gallagher of West Portal as his surviving sister. Family accounts further record that Billings commuted between Denver and the tunnel site by motorcycle, and that during one such trip he severely burned his leg. He soon fell ill with pneumonia and died on December 13, 1926, at the age of fifty-two. His funeral was held at Rogers Mortuary in Denver on December 17, 1926, with interment at Fairmount Cemetery. The Rocky Mountain News identified his residence as 1128 Cherokee, named his wife Bessie, his daughters Freda and Myrtle, and noted the extended family ties that tied him directly to the West Portal tunnel community. What the newspaper did not record—but the family preserved—is the full arc of a life that moved between mining camps, orchestral music, early motorcycle travel, and finally the winter dangers surrounding one of Colorado’s most ambitious engineering projects. Together, those strands resolve into a coherent historical profile: not merely a tunnel worker who died in 1926, but a man whose working life bridged extraction, construction, and mobility at the very moment Colorado’s high-country infrastructure was being forced into existence.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Charles Frederick Billings, please let us know.

#43 | 1927 | King Francis Weston

• Age: 31
• Birth: Monday, September 21, 1896 in Springfield, Ohio
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): chief electrician
• Date of Death: Wednesday, February 16, 1927
• Mechanism (event): electrocution (touched a wire carrying 2,300 volts in order to save the life of his friend)
• Medical Cause: cardiac/thermal injury
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 34, Plot 307, Grave 2
• Headstone: Monument located and confirmed.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 43516010
• Other Information: Contemporary newspaper accounts identifying King F. Weston as the twenty-seventh fatality of the Moffat Tunnel project reveal that the oft-repeated total of twenty-eight deaths is inaccurate—several additional fatalities and serious accidents occurred afterward. Additional information about Weston:
  • Records describe a pivotal incident during construction: on February 15, 1925, tunneling progress halted roughly 1,100 feet beneath Crater Lake when an estimated 1,800 gallons per minute of water began pouring into the bore. At the suggestion of an electrician recorded as K.S. Weston, crews cut through three feet of lake ice and poured in ten pounds of chloride of lime. When traces of the chemical appeared inside the tunnel, a stick of dynamite was thrown into the lake to seal the fissure—reducing the inflow to 150 gallons per minute, and soon after, to a trickle. Based on cross-referenced documentation, we’re nearly certain the “K.S.” attribution was a typographical or auditory error and that the individual was in fact K.F. Weston, the same King Weston who later perished during the project. It seems improbable that two electricians with the initials K. Weston would have been working on the Moffat Tunnel simultaneously, making it highly likely this was the same man—first identified in connection with the Crater Lake incident and later lost just days before the tunnel’s holing-through. Indeed, contemporary articles describing Weston’s passing refer to him as King S. Weston. Weston likely knew the area well; his home in Jenkinsville lay southwest of the Moffat Tunnel’s East Portal, giving him familiarity with routes to Crater Lakes.
  • A news story from the Associated Press mentioned, “Weston was attempting to save the life of his helper, E. J. Shepard, when he was killed. The accident occurred when a motor which they were attempting to adjust slipped and fell on Shepard’s leg, pinning him in the water on the floor of the tunnel. Weston, fearing the current would pas[s] through the water and injure Shepard tried to cut off the power and touched the switch knife. Shepard suffered painful injuries about the legs and lower body.” It’s clear: Weston made the ultimate sacrifice. Shepard was pinned in rising water with live current nearby, and if nothing changed, the electricity would find him. Weston understood that instantly. The only way to break the circuit was to grasp the bare metal knife switch itself, and reaching for it meant accepting the same danger himself. Deep in the tunnel where someone was almost certainly going to die, Weston consciously made the choice of who it wouldn’t be. That deep courage, that immediate sense of selflessness that it was Shepard’s story that should continue, that’s old-fashioned heroism. Weston was an experienced electrician who had been with the project from the beginning; a man with that depth of skill doesn’t simply blunder into a live switch. If he touched it, it was because he knew exactly what he was risking and chose to do it anyway. Indeed, a newspaper headline from the Albuquerque Journal on February 17, 1927 states, “MOFFAT TUNNEL WORKER KILLED SAVING FRIEND.”
  • Weston’s death occurred amid renewed efforts to control underground water as final preparations for the holing-through ceremony accelerated. He had served as the project’s chief electrician for three years. The motor powering the pumps broke on the preceding Thursday and was eventually removed; workers then spent all of Wednesday night repairing it so it could be reinstalled, as the motors drove the pumps that removed roughly 1,000 gallons of water each minute. Weston was electrocuted early Wednesday morning. The pump’s week-long outage had already intensified the pressure to complete repairs before the long-planned ceremony.
  • The date of the holing-through had been postponed multiple times—from February 16, to February 17, and finally to February 18, 1927—a date described as “mutually agreeable to Governor William H. Adams of Colorado and President Calvin Coolidge.” Given that two previous changes had already been coordinated with the White House, it is reasonable to infer that the Moffat Tunnel Commission was reluctant to request another postponement. That likely contributed to a sense of “go-fever”—a determination to meet the fixed date regardless of the accumulating risks underground. When Coolidge touched the golden telegraph key from Washington, D.C., symbolically detonating the final blast that joined the east and west headings, newspapers reported that Weston “falls victim as preparations for Moffat Celebration are rushed.” After Weston’s electrocution, water started rising rapidly. The Associated Press reported that Moffat Tunnel crews were forced to work in water “up to their necks” after pumps on the east side of the pioneer bore were knocked out of commission earlier that morning by an accident that killed an electrician, allowing a lake to form near cross cut No. 12; with the crucial breakthrough scheduled for Friday night, men waded shoulder-deep to boost pump efficiency while engineers estimated that, once operations stabilized, the flooded section could be drained within four to five hours.
  • Tunnel co-workers took up a collection to send a wreath of flowers to his widow, Mrs. Kathryn M. Weston, and a Saturday night dance at the tunnel was postponed out of respect. Weston, described as one of the largest men in the camp at 6 feet 2 inches tall, was remembered as careful, conscientious, and widely liked among the crew. As contractor F. D. Hitchcock stated directly, “Weston was one of the most careful and conscientious men in the crew.”
  • Of interesting note is that Edgar McMechen describes Weston’s death in two separate sections of his book, yet the accounts diverge in ways that are difficult to reconcile. On page 213, the incident is presented in compressed form: Weston, “after three years connection with the work,” was electrocuted while repairing a pump when he “leaned against a high voltage wire carrying two thousand three hundred volts,” because he “had not turned off the switch.” In this telling, the fatal cause is framed as a procedural failure, and no broader context is supplied. The later account on page 257 situates Weston’s death within an unfolding emergency. Power failures caused by “high wind and snow” had shut down the pumps, flooding the tunnel until the water “stood waist deep.” Here, McMechen states explicitly that Weston “could not have turned off the switch within the tunnel without shutting down both pumps” and that, rather than returning to the portal controls, “he voluntarily ran the risk of electrocution.” The fatal moment is attributed not merely to contact with a live wire, but to compounded conditions: water overflowing “the tops of his rubber boots,” the establishment of “perfect conditions for a current,” and a slip into a deep hole immediately before he leaned against a wire carrying “twenty-three hundred volts.” Read together, the passages point to the same individual—same task, same voltage range, same outcome—yet they assign causation differently. One emphasizes omission (“had not turned off the switch”); the other emphasizes constraint (“could not have turned off the switch”) and situational necessity. That McMechen advances both explanations within his own narrative matters, because it shifts the interpretive burden from individual error to systemic risk and emergency conditions. The internal tension between these accounts underscores the need to treat any single passage cautiously and to corroborate Weston’s death against independent contemporaneous sources rather than relying on a lone narrative strand.
  • The same man whose quick thinking in 1925 helped seal a leak beneath Crater Lake appears again two years later at the center of another water-related emergency, this time at the end of the tunnel’s holing-through rather than its beginning. His life effectively brackets that milestone—a reminder that even monumental engineering achievements are measured not just by cubic yards of rock removed, but by the people who gave everything to see them joined.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): King S. Weston
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about King Francis Weston, please let us know.

#44 | 1927 | James Gerald Engleman

• Age: 20
• Birth: Tuesday, November 27, 1906 in Litchfield, Nebraska
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Wednesday, April 20, 1927
• Mechanism (event): exposure/respiratory
• Medical Cause: pneumonia
• Manner: natural (occupational illness)
• Burial: Craig Cemetery, Craig, Colorado | Section Fairview 28, Plot 6
• Headstone: Monument located and confirmed.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 28612372
• Other Information: James Gerald Engleman, born November 27, 1906, in Litchfield, Nebraska, died at his family’s home in Craig, Colorado, on April 20, 1927, following several weeks of illness caused by measles complicated by pneumonia. Contemporary newspapers state explicitly that his fatal illness was “contracted while working at West Portal” of the Moffat Tunnel, removing any ambiguity about where the disease originated. He fell ill while employed at the tunnel, was hospitalized for approximately eight days, and was released before returning home—so weakened that, unaware his parents had not been notified, he reportedly walked from the railroad station to his house through a snowstorm. His condition worsened rapidly, and he died roughly one week after being confined to bed by his physician. Engleman was the eldest of seven children of Mr. and Mrs. Ed (A. E.) Engleman of the Great Divide district near Craig. A 1926 graduate of Craig High School, he entered the University of Colorado at Boulder in the fall of that year, where he earned unusual scholastic honors during his first quarter and was pledged to the Beta Gamma fraternity. Owing solely to financial necessity—not academic standing—he withdrew from the university and took employment at the Moffat Tunnel with the express purpose of saving money to return to school. Multiple accounts describe him as a talented musician, prominent in school activities, dramatics, athletics, and music, and widely regarded as one of the most promising young men Craig had produced. Engleman’s funeral was held at the Craig Armory and was attended by a standing-room-only crowd, a reflection of his standing in the community. A military funeral with full honors was conducted, with Company A, 157th Infantry, serving as escort of honor, and the Craig High School Boys’ Glee Club providing the music. He was survived by his parents; one brother, Marvin E. Engleman; and five sisters—Ella Ruth, Avis Louise, and the twins Ardeth Fay and Edith May—with another sibling having died previously and been buried in Litchfield. Although one article mistakenly stated that he was “approaching his 21st birthday,” his documented birthdate confirms he was 20 years old at the time of death.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about James Gerald Engleman, please let us know.

#45 | 1927 | Frank Davis

• Age: 39-40
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): shift boss
• Date of Death: Thursday, April 28, 1927
• Mechanism (event): exposure/respiratory
• Medical Cause: pneumonia
• Manner: natural (occupational illness)
• Burial: Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 14, Lot 12, Section 80, no headstone/unmarked
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 154191344
• Other Information: Frank Davis, a shift boss stationed at the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel, died at St. Anthony’s Hospital in Denver after developing pneumonia that the newspaper expressly states was “contracted while working at the Moffat tunnel.” As a shift boss, Davis’s duties placed him consistently inside the active bore, overseeing extended underground operations rather than rotating through shorter task-based assignments. In that context, the illness is not framed by the press as coincidental with his employment but as arising directly from it—an explicit occupational attribution by contemporary reporting. Funeral arrangements were placed in the care of Spillane’s mortuary. Davis was laid to rest at Riverside Cemetery in Denver—Block 14, Lot 12, Section 80—without a headstone, his name fading quietly into the ground even as the tunnel he helped drive forward became one of the great engineering monuments of the American West.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Frank Davis, please let us know.

#46 | 1927 | Clarence Elmer McKown

• Age: 51
• Birth: Monday, May 15, 1876 in Iowa
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Sunday, May 29, 1927
• Mechanism (event): overexertion/physiologic
• Medical Cause: severe rupture while lifting a heavy object
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Hendley Cemetery, Hendley, Nebraska
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 235294540
• Other Information: Clarence Elmer McKown, the eldest son of Thomas Jefferson McKown and Sarah McKown—later Mrs. J. W. Childers of Hendley, Nebraska—was born near Villisca, Iowa, on May 15, 1876. His family relocated to Nebraska in 1879, and he married Della Ellis on November 28, 1902. The sons named in the obituary record are Laurel McKown, Ellis McKown, Lyle Jefferson McKown, and Danie Banning McKown, along with the youngest, Dale Banning McKown, who died on April 25, 1917. During Clarence’s final illness, Kenneth McKown and Lyle McKown were reported at his bedside, while Laurel McKown was in Michigan and unable to attend the funeral—an internal naming inconsistency that originates within the historical source itself. Clarence was preceded in death by his father in 1913, an unnamed brother in 1898, and his sister Mrs. Myrtle C. Myers in 1912. He was survived by his mother, his brother J. A. McKown, his sister Mrs. Ella Smith of Hendley, and his surviving sons. McKown died on May 29, 1927, at East Portal, Colorado, at the age of fifty-one following what contemporary reporting described as a short illness. He underwent surgery on the morning of his death and passed away before he could be removed from the operating table, establishing his death as medical and perioperative rather than industrial or accidental in nature. Although the location of death places him within the hazardous geographic context of the Moffat Tunnel’s construction environment, the surviving record draws a clear distinction between proximity and cause. A man of faith and civic involvement, McKown confessed his belief in Christ in 1917 at Beaver City and later united with both the Church of Christ and the Community Presbyterian Church at Lebanon, Nebraska. He was a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Modern Woodmen of America, and the Lebanon Rebekah Lodge. His body was returned to Hendley, where funeral services were held at the Christian church on Wednesday afternoon, and he was laid to rest in the Hendley Cemetery beside the grave of his youngest son.
• McKown’s World War I Draft Card states that he was of medium height, stout build, with brown hair and brown eyes.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Clarence Elmer McKown, please let us know.

#47 | 1927 | Charles L. Rice

• Age: 27
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): driller
• Date of Death: Thursday, July 14, 1927
• Mechanism (event): explosion
• Medical Cause: blast trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: unknown
• Headstone: unknown
• Find A Grave Memorial: Under Analysis/Research
• Other Information: Charles L. Rice (also reported contemporaneously as C. L. Wright), age 27, a driller employed at the West Portal of the Moffat Tunnel, was critically injured in a premature dynamite explosion at Crosscut No. 10 on the night of June 24, 1927, and succumbed to those injuries on July 14, 1927. Multiple newspapers reported that while boring through a wall of rock, Rice struck an unfired charge left from a previous blast, triggering an explosion that sent flying rock and broken timbers through the heading. He sustained a severely crushed and lacerated face, a broken jaw, and massive trauma and blood loss, and was rushed in critical condition to the West Portal hospital, where physicians stated that he “might not recover.” The same explosion also injured Roy Johnson, 20, a mucker on his first day of tunnel duty, who suffered a fractured leg but was expected to survive. Rice’s death notice appeared July 14, 1927, at West Portal. Although no surviving article explicitly restates that his death resulted from the June 24 explosion, the convergence of age, occupation, location, initials, timing, and the documented prognosis of likely non-recovery, combined with the absence of any independent record for a surviving “C. L. Wright,” establishes with overwhelming confidence that the two names refer to the same individual, and that the discrepancy reflects a phonetic or wire-service transmission error rather than separate persons. Rice’s death therefore converts the June 24, 1927 West Portal dynamite explosion from a near-fatal accident into a confirmed fatal industrial casualty.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): C. L. Wright
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Charles L. Rice, please let us know.

#48 | 1927 | Michael Tomavsky

• Age: 38
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: NLT Sunday, July 31, 1927, likely Friday, July 29, 1927
• Mechanism (event): unknown
• Medical Cause: unknown
• Manner: undetermined
• Burial: Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 19, Lot SMP
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 287923919
• Other Information: Michael “Mike” Tomaskey died at West Portal in late July 1927 and was buried at Riverside Cemetery in Denver on July 31 of that year. His funeral notice, published in The Rocky Mountain News on July 31, records that he was formerly of 2204 Larimer Street and that services were held first at the Hartford Mortuary and then at the Russian Orthodox Church of Globeville before interment at Riverside. In the cemetery ledger, however, he appears under the name Michael Tomavsky, buried the same day in Block 38, Lot 19, SMP. This is not a separate individual but a routine case of Slavic surname transliteration drift—an artifact of how Eastern European names were frequently heard, recorded, and Anglicized differently across newspapers, church records, and cemetery books. The convergence of the burial date, the Russian Orthodox funeral services, the West Portal work location, and the Riverside interment establishes a single, coherent identity beyond reasonable dispute. Accordingly, he is correctly documented as Michael “Mike” Tomaskey (a.k.a. Tomavsky)—another example of how the administrative friction of early-twentieth-century recordkeeping can fracture a worker’s name even as his life and death remain singular.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Mike, Tomaskey
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Michael Tomavsky, please let us know.

#49 | 1927 | Thomas T. Williams

• Age: 43
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): superintendent
• Date of Death: Sunday, August 28, 1927
• Mechanism (event): struck-by equipment (motor dropped and threw him against tunnel; fractured skull)
• Medical Cause: skull fracture
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 34, Plot 314, Grave 2
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 274240446
• Other Information: Thomas T. Williams served as the West Portal superintendent during construction of the Moffat Tunnel. On Sunday, August 28, while riding through the tunnel in an electric tram car, the drive shaft suddenly snapped, throwing Williams head first from the car. He was violently hurled into the ceiling of the tunnel and suffered severe injuries to his head and spine. The driver, Thornton Waller, was thrown clear and escaped with only minor scratches. Williams was taken to the West Portal hospital, where he remained under care until he later died from the injuries sustained in the wreck. Funeral services for Williams were held at the Olinger Mortuary in Denver, with burial at Crown Hill Cemetery. In recognition of his leadership and the loss to the operation, work at the tunnel halted for five minutes on the day of his services, allowing approximately 800 men to pay tribute to his memory. His death stands among the mechanically documented fatalities of the project, caused by failure of the electric tram car’s drive shaft rather than by rockfall, gas, or structural collapse.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Thomas G. Williams
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Thomas T. Williams, please let us know.

#50 | 1927 | Frank M. Myers

• Age: 47
• Birth: Friday, June 25, 1880 in Haddam, Kansas
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): miner
• Date of Death: Tuesday, September 20, 1927
• Mechanism (event): fall from scaffold while repairing timbers (backward fall with fatal neck impact)
• Medical Cause: neck trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 18, Plot 312, Grave 2
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 62724372
• Other Information: Frank M. Myers was fatally injured at the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel on September 19, 1927, while working on a scaffold repairing tunnel timbers. The 1927 Colorado Bureau of Mines records that Myers, an American miner, age forty-seven, fell in an unexplained manner, striking the back of his neck and sustaining internal injuries, and died the following day, September 20, 1927. The accident was formally classified as “clearly accidental and unavoidable.” A contemporaneous notice in the Rocky Mountain News dated September 22, 1927, misspelled his surname as “Meyer,” but correctly identified him as late of East Portal, Colorado, and named his wife, Ruth Myers. Funeral services were held at Olinger Mortuary in Denver, with interment at Crown Hill Cemetery. The burial register’s confirmation of “Frank M. Myers” establishes the correct spelling of the surname and conclusively links the newspaper notice and the Bureau of Mines fatality record to the same individual.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Frank M. Myers, please let us know.

#51 | 1927 | John J. Hawley

• Age: unknown
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Wednesday, October 12, 1927
• Mechanism (event): unknown
• Medical Cause: unknown
• Manner: undetermined
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 14, Plot 44, Grave 8
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 141098550
• Other Information: The only surviving contemporary notice located to date is the brief mortuary line: “Hawley—John Hawley, October 12, at West Portal, Colo…. Interment at Crown Hill.” No obituary, accident description, or coroner’s report has yet been found, and no Colorado Bureau of Mines annual report for 1927 attributes a death on that date to a named individual matching Hawley. That silence matters precisely because most tunnel fatalities—particularly accidental ones—triggered either a Bureau investigation, a newspaper item, or both. The absence of such documentation leaves open multiple possibilities: he may have been a tunnel employee whose death was not reported publicly; he may have died from natural causes or a sudden medical event in the construction camp; or he may have been working in a supporting capacity whose death fell outside the period’s reporting norms. Each of these is only a hypothesis until supported by a primary record. Crown Hill Cemetery in Wheat Ridge confirms that an individual named John Hawley was interred there following a death at West Portal on October 12, 1927, but the cemetery file contains no additional biographical or occupational detail. Without a death certificate, probate file, military record, or family obituary, his age, nationality, employment status, and the circumstances of his final day all remain unknown. In a project aiming to reconstruct the full human cost of Moffat Tunnel construction, Hawley’s case underscores why archival gaps—rather than diminishing the significance of a worker—often heighten it. An unelaborated death record at a remote industrial site in 1927 is itself a signal that more may once have existed, whether in a lost coroner’s ledger, a missing camp log, or an unpreserved local paper. His inclusion marks a commitment to documenting every death associated with the tunnel, even when the historical record resists easy recovery.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about John J. Hawley, please let us know.

#52 | 1927 | Peter Medich

• Age: 40
• Townsite Association: East Portal, Gilpin County
• Occupation (role/trade): mucker
• Date of Death: Tuesday, October 18, 1927
• Mechanism (event): struck-by timber
• Medical Cause: blunt trauma
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 19, Lot SMP, Section 269
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 287923961
• Other Information: The 1927 Colorado Bureau of Mines report documents the accident in plain, mechanical terms: “October 17, Pete Nadich, nationality unknown, age 38, mucker, was fatally injured in the Moffat Tunnel. He was standing on one side of the tunnel close to a concrete invert, when the wheels of a truck which was pushed forward by an electric motor, struck a piece of 6×6 timber and raised one end suddenly, which struck him on the left leg, breaking it in several places from ankle to thigh. He died the following day.” A brief Denver mortuary notice likewise recorded his death at West Portal on October 18 and announced services at the Russian Church at 47th and Logan, though it offered no detail about the accident itself—a striking reminder that even severe construction injuries sometimes received only the briefest public mention. Riverside Cemetery’s interment ledger resolves the name discrepancy: no “Nadich” was buried there in 1927, but Peter Medich, age 40, was interred on October 22, 1927, in Block 19, Lot SMP. The alignment of dates, age, and location strongly indicates a single individual whose surname was rendered inconsistently across sources, a common distortion for Slavic names in 1920s Colorado. This convergence of evidence—Mines report, mortuary notice, and burial record—makes clear that Medich should be counted among the confirmed Moffat Tunnel fatalities. The case also illustrates why the project’s broader reconstruction requires treating every variant spelling as a hypothesis to be tested; otherwise, workers lost to transcription error risk disappearing from the historical record entirely.
• Contemporary misprints (as reported in newspapers and other sources): Pete, Nadich
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Peter Medich, please let us know.

#53 | 1928 | John Zuzulis

• Age: 39-40
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Date of Death: Sunday, February 26, 1928
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Mechanism (event): unknown
• Medical Cause: unknown
• Manner: unspecified
• Burial: Riverside Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 14, Lot 2, Section 133, no headstone/unmarked
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 141851625
• Other Information: John Zuzulis died at West Portal on February 26, 1928—the same day the Moffat Tunnel formally opened—and his death passed almost without public comment. The only contemporary notice located to date is a brief line in the Rocky Mountain News on March 1, 1928: “Zuzulis—John Zuzulis, Feb 26, at West Portal, Colo. Arrangements later.” No follow-up article has been found, and no account has surfaced that explains the circumstances of his final day. That silence is notable precisely because many tunnel-phase fatalities, sudden illnesses, and serious injuries produced at least some measure of press or official documentation. When all that survives in the current research record is a single mortuary listing, it highlights an evidentiary gap rather than supporting any conclusion about the nature of the death. The burial data add only a few fixed points. Zuzulis was interred at Riverside Cemetery in Denver on March 7, 1928, recorded as age forty and placed in Block 14, Lot 2, Section 133. The grave today is unmarked. To date, no cemetery file, newspaper report, coroner’s record, or other official documentation has been located that expands on his cause of death, his role or activities at West Portal in the hours preceding it, or whether medical care was attempted. Given the volume of material still dispersed across regional archives, it remains entirely possible that additional records exist but have not yet been identified. Because his death coincided with the tunnel’s inauguration, Zuzulis’ case illustrates how easily an individual loss could be overshadowed at the precise moment public attention shifted toward celebration. For a centennial accounting that seeks to recover every worker’s story, the incompleteness surrounding his final day becomes part of the historical truth: the record’s silences are themselves indicators of whose experiences were preserved—and whose were eclipsed—during one of Colorado’s most heralded engineering milestones.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about John Zuzulis, please let us know.

#54 | 1928 | Frederick Stanley Watt

• Age: 52
• Birth: Tuesday, November 2, 1875 in Newcastle, New Brunswick, Canada
• Townsite Association: West Portal, Grand County
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Tuesday, March 13, 1928
• Mechanism (event): exposure/respiratory
• Medical Cause: pneumonia (persisting from roughly opening day through March 13th)
• Manner: natural (occupational illness)
• Burial: Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 88, Lot 106, Section 5
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 291554806
• Other Information: Frederick Stanley Watt became ill at the West Portal of the Moffat Tunnel in February 1928 while performing his regular duties for the Tunnel Commission. His wife immediately brought him to Denver, where physicians at Mercy Hospital diagnosed a serious respiratory infection—described variously in contemporary reporting as pneumonia, typhoid pneumonia, or pneumonia that developed into typhoid fever. After a temporary improvement that allowed discharge to his home at 1452 Elizabeth Street, his condition rapidly worsened, and he died there at 7:00 p.m. on March 13, 1928, following a weeks-long illness. As with Fred Sperandio (above)—whose death also occurred at West Portal but not inside the tunnel—the surviving documentation shows only that Watt’s illness began during his service there; no source identifies a specific cause or links his condition to interior tunnel operations. His death is included here because his fatal illness began while he was assigned to West Portal in the course of supporting tunnel operations. Watt was born in Newcastle, New Brunswick (reported as 1874 in one obituary and 1877 in the other), spent part of his youth in Boston, and came to Colorado in the early 1890s. He worked for more than thirty years in the mining industry—especially around Aspen and Marble—and held a respected position with the Yule Marble Company until operations ceased around 1925. He then joined the Moffat Tunnel Commission, where he served in a senior administrative capacity: one obituary identifies him as head of the Supply Department, while the other calls him the Commission’s cost accountant and private secretary to Chief Engineer George Lewis. Taken together, the descriptions point to a trusted managerial role within the project’s financial and logistical operations. He was active in several fraternal organizations, including Maroon Camp No. 14 of the Woodmen of the World, Aspen Lodge No. 224 of the B.P.O. Elks, and Hiram Lodge No. 98, A.F. & A.M., where he had been a past master. Survivors included his wife; four children—Kenneth of El Centro, California; Margaret of Paradox, Colorado; Dorothy; and Frederick of Denver—as well as his mother and sister in British Columbia. Contemporaries remembered him in strikingly personal terms: “a true and loyal friend; a loving husband and father; a splendid citizen; a home-builder.” In the idiom of 1920s Colorado obituary writing, such language signals not mere sentiment but a community’s recognition of character and civic standing—an additional reason his death drew detailed notices in multiple newspapers. Funeral services were held at Olinger Mortuary, and burial followed at Fairmount Cemetery.
• Watt’s World War I Draft Card states that he was of medium height, slender build, with black hair and dark brown eyes.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Frederick Stanley Watt, please let us know.

#55 | 1928 | Theodore Leo Smith

• Age: 25
• Townsite Association: death occurred outside of the Moffat Tunnel or associated townsite; original townsite association is unknown
• Occupation (role/trade): laborer
• Date of Death: Monday, April 9, 1928
• Mechanism (event): poisoning
• Medical Cause: gas inhalation
• Manner: suicide
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 18, Plot 326, Grave 8
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 281264427
• Other Information: Newspaper accounts from Denver and Boulder on the day following his death agree on the central facts: Theodore Leo Smith, twenty-five, a former University of Colorado student and member of Phi Kappa Psi, died by suicide at his family’s home at 551 Colorado Boulevard after inhaling illuminating gas. Police Surgeon Sickafoose attributed his despondency to ill health, and relatives told investigators that the decline began after an unspecified injury sustained while working at the Moffat Tunnel two years earlier. None of the articles identify the nature of that injury, the circumstances in which it occurred, or whether it directly impaired him at the time. The only verifiable point is that family members themselves linked his chronic condition to that earlier event. The timeline presented in the press is consistent across sources: Smith had recently taken a job with the Public Service Company and had worked there for two months. On the morning of his death he reported to work but became too ill to remain and was sent home. After returning, he went to bed to rest; his mother then went downtown to seek a physician’s guidance. The evidence suggests he waited until she had left before opening the gas jets. His father discovered his body roughly an hour after death. What matters for the historical record is the precision of the causal chain. The clippings do not document what happened inside—or near—the Moffat Tunnel, and they do not identify a diagnosable medical condition. They merely report that his long illness followed an injury incurred while working there, and that his relatives believed this lingering decline contributed to his state of mind in 1928. Because the accounts are second-hand and framed through family belief rather than medical diagnosis, they highlight a limitation in reconstructing past workplace injuries: when records of the underlying incident do not survive, historians must treat claims of causation probabilistically rather than conclusively. Even with that constraint, Smith’s case bears significance for the broader centennial study. It demonstrates that the tunnel’s human toll extended beyond the well-documented construction-phase fatalities. Some workers carried injuries—and their consequences—long after leaving the project, and at least in this instance, a family perceived that protracted aftermath as contributing to the loss of a young man who had never fully recovered.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Theodore Leo Smith, please let us know.

CONSTRUCTION YEAR SUBTOTALS

Fatalities will be updated as research continues. Presently, we have 55 fatalities related to the Moffat Tunnel (34 at West Portal, 17 at East Portal, with two unknown and two as N/A):

1923: 0 lives confirmed lost

1924: 10 lives confirmed lost

1925: 12 lives confirmed lost

1926: 20 lives confirmed lost

1927: 10 lives confirmed lost

1928: 3 lives confirmed lost

This comprehensive memorial is the result of original, ongoing research. Each name added to this list has been carefully vetted through primary sources and corroborated across multiple records. Because much of this information has never before been compiled or published in a single location, we ask that any reuse or citation of this work properly credit the researchers (B. Travis Wright and Kate Wright of Preserve Rollins Pass) and our project. Attribution ensures the integrity of the record and honors the effort that has gone into reconstructing these long-overlooked histories.

WHY THE MOFFAT TUNNEL NEEDS A CENOTAPH

Given that the final resting places of many who died during the construction of the Moffat Tunnel remain unknown, or are located in distant cemeteries far from the site, it is time to consider establishing a cenotaph to be unveiled during the tunnel’s 100th anniversary weekend in February 2028. This memorial would serve as a permanent and solemn acknowledgment of the laborers whose lives made the tunnel possible, regardless of where they are buried. Some were never given headstones. Others were misidentified, their names lost to clerical error or the passage of time. A cenotaph near the tunnel would offer families, historians, and the public a place to reflect, to mourn, and to remember. It would anchor their sacrifice to the very landscape they helped shape and ensure that their legacy is not forgotten.

BEYOND THE WORKERS: UNCOUNTED LOSSES AT THE MOFFAT TUNNEL CAMPS

Workers were not the only ones who died during the construction of the Moffat Tunnel—tragedy extended to their families as well. Life in the remote tunnel camps was unforgiving, and the toll included wives and children who lived alongside the laborers. As one example, The Steamboat Pilot reported on January 6, 1926: “Mrs. W.C. Dell died at West Portal on Christmas Day. Her husband is a driller in the Moffat Tunnel. She leaves a 4-year-old son.” While these deaths are not included in our official worker fatality totals, they bear mentioning nonetheless. Their losses, though quieter and less often recorded, are part of the broader human cost of this project and deserve remembrance.

A FOOTNOTE: THE TUNNEL THAT TOOK—AND GAVE

We also track unique stories where the existence of the Moffat Tunnel—prior to its official opening to rail traffic in 1928—may have repaid, in part, some of the lives it had taken. These instances, though rare, reflect moments where the partially completed tunnel was used in ways that offered life-saving utility or emergency access:

1927 | Volla Slater

• Age: 2
• Townsite Association: West Portal
• Date of Birth: early 1925
• Mechanism (event): While playing in her home in West Portal on Wednesday, February 23, 1927, the “little girl was seriously burned when clothing caught fire after her mother had thrown gasoline into a smoldering fire. Her body was a mass of burns before the fire could be extinguished.”
• Medical Cause: burn trauma
• Burial: Volla would be 100 as of 2025. No death information can be located.
• Other Information: “No medical aid being near at hand, it was necessary that the child be brought to Denver, but the road to Denver over Berthoud pass was closed by snow and it was decided that the only way to save the life of the little girl was to carry her thru the tunnel to East Portal, where she could be put into an automobile and brought to Denver. Wrapped in soft clothes, Volla rode six miles thru the tunnel in one of the small electric muck cars and Thursday morning arrived in Denver in an automobile. She was taken to the Children’s hospital, where it was said she would live.” Volla is credited as the first person to travel through the length of the Moffat Tunnel (pioneer bore). Of interesting note is this happened just days after President Coolidge connected both sides of the pioneer bore.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share, please let us know.

DEATHS AFTER THE 1923-1928 CONSTRUCTION PERIOD

Even after the completion of the Moffat Tunnel in 1928, the danger did not end. The tunnel and its surrounding infrastructure continued to claim lives in the years that followed—through accidents, maintenance incidents, and railway-related fatalities. These post-construction deaths are not included in our tally of lives lost during the tunnel’s building phase, but they are part of the tunnel’s extended legacy. From workers struck during improvement work to those involved in derailments or caught in mechanical failures, these later losses serve as a sobering reminder that the cost of such monumental infrastructure is not confined to its construction alone. The tunnel has long symbolized engineering triumph—but it also carries a quieter, enduring human toll.

Note: Names shown in bold have been fully verified through multiple independent sources, confirming not just the individual’s identity but also the date and circumstances of death. Names not yet in bold have been documented in at least one credible source; however, further corroboration is still needed to confirm additional details. This approach reflects both our commitment to accuracy and the reality that, in some cases, full confirmation may never be possible. By distinguishing levels of verification, we aim to honor every individual while transparently acknowledging the limitations of the historical record.

Moffat Tunnel Deaths: In Memoriam of The Lives Lost After Building Colorado’s Historic Tunnel

#1 | 1932 | Ralph Colin Poucher

• Age: 41
• Birth: Monday, March 31, 1890 in Michigan
• Project/Incident: moving large boulders within the Moffat Water Tunnel, preliminary construction for the Denver Trans-Mountain Fraser River Diversion Project
• Date of Death: Sunday, October 16, 1932
• Mechanism (event): high compression drill struck a stick of dynamite that was in the bore unexploded for ~six years from the original construction period
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 40, Plot 105, Grave 8
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 170631643
• Other Information: Ralph Colin Poucher, 41, employed at West Portal and identified in contemporary reporting as a former Denver policeman, was killed instantly on October 16, 1932, in a dynamite explosion inside the Moffat Tunnel water-bore workings. Newspaper accounts consistently place the accident several miles within the bore and describe the decisive moment in plain terms: the air drill Poucher was operating struck a concealed, unexploded remnant of earlier blasting, detonating with catastrophic force and ending his life immediately. The Colorado Bureau of Mines’ 1932 report supplies the technical clarity—and the authoritative causation judgment—that the press could only approximate. The Bureau recorded that on October 16 Poucher “was drilling a down hole when he came in contact with a missed hole killing him instantly,” specifying that the missed hole was a lifter that had been present “since the tunnel was first driven.” The report classified the incident bluntly as an “Unavoidable accident.” That phrasing confirms the hazard was not a fresh act of mishandling, but a latent, embedded remnant from earlier driving—a missed shot sealed within hard rock that could persist undetected until intersected by later drilling. Poucher’s coworker, Edward Ledford, 23, was critically injured in the same blast. Press accounts reported that Ledford suffered severe injuries, was rendered unconscious, and was transported to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Denver, where early descriptions emphasized the seriousness of his condition. Multiple reports add a stark illustration of chance at work: at least three other men in close proximity escaped injury because a large boulder shielded them from the brunt of flying debris. In the confined geometry of the bore, where rock fragments could become lethal projectiles, that boulder marked the difference between survival and death. Investigators treated the event as accidental rather than negligent. Newspapers noted review by local authorities and a state mine inspector and reported that no negligence by tunnel authorities was found and that no inquest would be held—an assessment fully aligned with the Bureau of Mines’ later official classification. The combined record, therefore, preserves both the human immediacy of the tragedy and the institutional conclusion: Poucher died not because work was carelessly conducted that day, but because hidden remnants of blasting could remain in the rock for years, waiting for one drill line to intersect them. The incident was also framed within the broader accounting of risk that followed the tunnel’s construction. One report stated that Poucher’s death marked the first fatality or injury since March 1, 1928, when water-bore work began, and that it brought the total reported death toll associated with the Moffat Tunnel project to 33. His body was taken to Olinger Mortuary, funeral services were held at Olinger’s (16th and Boulder) at 3:30 p.m., and burial followed at Crown Hill Cemetery, moving the tragedy quickly from the depths of the bore to Denver’s civic and mortuary landscape. Newspapers identified Poucher’s widow as Addie—his second wife—and named his surviving children as Frank, 18, and Mrs. Evelyn Osborn of Denver, along with his mother, sister, and two brothers living in Boulder. Family reconstruction confirms that Poucher’s first wife, Ava A., died in Denver on July 7, 1928, at age 37, after seventeen years of marriage, and that he remarried in Denver on July 1, 1931, to Addie Ethel Hylton. The children—Evelyn (born August 1912) and Frank (born October 1914)—were therefore from the first marriage, and family recollection holds that after Poucher’s death Addie soon left Colorado for Florida, effectively abandoning the two children. Taken together, the documentary and family record preserves both halves of the story: a death officially recorded as an unavoidable industrial accident caused by a missed lifter hole dating to the tunnel’s earliest driving, and a household that—already reshaped by loss in 1928—was forced to absorb a second, final rupture in 1932.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Ralph Colin Poucher, please let us know.

#2 | 1935 | Joseph Oscar McCloskey

• Age: 27
• Project/Incident: relining the Moffat Water Tunnel, construction for the Denver Trans-Mountain Fraser River Diversion Project
• Date of Death: Thursday, July 11, 1935
• Mechanism (event): injured when a jack hammer he was operating exploded a charge of powder which had not ignited during blasting operations a few minutes before. The explosion drove the handle of the heavy hammer into his abdomen
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, Colorado | Block 48, Lot 151, Section 1
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 124697562
• Other Information: Joseph Oscar McCloskey enters the record through a cluster of closely aligned newspaper accounts that leave little doubt about the cause and sequence of events. McCloskey—age twenty-seven, and identified variously as a Fraser man and a former Golden/Denver resident—was employed by a construction firm working inside the Moffat Tunnel, specifically on relining the tunnel’s water bore (also described as the “pioneer bore”). Late Tuesday, July 9, while operating a jackhammer in the bore, his work intersected fatally with the hidden residue of prior blasting: the tool struck, or otherwise ignited, an unexploded charge that had failed to detonate only minutes earlier. The resulting explosion drove the handle of the heavy hammer through his abdomen, with at least one account adding severe cuts from flying rock—an injury mechanism consistent with both a confined-space blast and close proximity to the work face. The aftermath was equally consistent across accounts and underscores the physical remoteness of the incident. Three nearby workmen escaped injury and carried McCloskey roughly four miles through the tunnel to West Portal, where he received emergency treatment from Dr. G. D. Houschere, described as attached to the construction company. When it became apparent that his condition was critical, he was transferred by ambulance to Denver. Most reports place his death at St. Joseph’s Hospital on Thursday, July 11th. Family notices add important identifying detail that anchors McCloskey beyond the tunnel. He was born and reared in Denver, later living near Golden, and had moved to Fraser about four years before his death, with one report stating he had been working in the tunnel for five months. He was survived by his wife, Mrs. Mabel McCloskey, and a daughter, Geraldine, age six; another account names his father as Clarence McCloskey of Golden Hill, adjoining Golden, and notes four brothers and four sisters living in Colorado. Funeral services were handled by Olinger Mortuary, followed by interment at Fairmount Cemetery. A published “Card of Thanks,” signed by “C. O. McCloskey and Family,” reinforces both the suddenness of the loss and the role of the West Portal camp community, offering specific thanks to friends, neighbors, Coors’ Porcelain company, and “those boys from West Portal” who served as pallbearers—an understated but revealing glimpse of how quickly tunnel crews could shift from coworkers to caretakers when the mountain turned lethal.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Joseph Oscar McCloskey, please let us know.

#3 | 1935 | Henry Daniel Greening

• Age: 35
• Project/Incident: relining the Moffat Water Tunnel, construction for the Denver Trans-Mountain Fraser River Diversion Project
• Date of Death: Tuesday, August 6, 1935
• Mechanism (event): on Monday, August 5th, an air drill exploded an old dynamite charge from construction efforts from a decade prior
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 14, Plot 231, Grave 7
• Headstone: Approximate location available.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 291555276
• Other Information: Early Monday morning in August 1935, three Denver men working deep inside the Moffat Tunnel pioneer bore near West Portal were severely injured when an air drill detonated an old charge of dynamite believed to have been left in the tunnel wall since the original bore work was completed nearly ten years earlier. The men—Henry Greening, 35, John J. Parko, 29, and Frank Stonich, 51—were employed on the Fraser River water diversion project and were reportedly engaged in relining the pioneer bore when the accident occurred roughly three miles from the West Portal base. Contemporary reporting treated the explosion as the second such mishap in recent weeks, noting that a similar accident on July 11 had killed James O. McClosky, a rock drill operator formerly of Denver. Greening, who was operating the drill at the time of the blast, was described as the most severely injured. Newspapers reported that he was struck in the face by hundreds of tiny particles of granite, with slivers driven into both eyes and his face; both legs were broken, and his right hand was badly mangled. Early accounts characterized his condition as critical and warned that he might lose his sight. Other workers placed the three men on a dump car and took them to the tunnel mouth, where a waiting automobile carried them to St. Anthony’s Hospital in Denver for emergency treatment. Despite medical care, Greening died Tuesday night at St. Anthony’s Hospital from the injuries sustained in the explosion. He was survived by his wife, Mrs. Maurice Greening, and two sons, Gene, 11, and Robert, 8. The papers’ emphasis on his wounds—particularly the granite fragments driven into his eyes and face—underscored how drilling work inside the bore could expose men not only to the force of explosives, but to the lethal secondary effects of flying rock. Parko and Stonich were reported to have survived, though both suffered serious injuries. A rock chip penetrated Parko’s right eye and was said to threaten loss of sight; he also suffered a severe injury to his right hip. Stonich’s right hand was broken, and he sustained back injuries; one account explained that he was working on the opposite side of a muck car from the others and did not receive the full force of the blast. In Stonich’s case, the reporting also noted a separate family tragedy: he was identified as the father of George Stonich, a 27-year-old railroad section worker whose mangled body was found July 19 near Eaton after he had been struck by a train.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Henry Daniel Greening, please let us know.

#4 | 1937 | Martin Callahan

• Age: 56
• Birth: Saturday, September 18, 1880 in Minnesota
• Project/Incident: pushing a train over the apex from West Portal, (rail operations)
• Date of Death: Saturday, February 13, 1937
• Mechanism (event): crushed and scalded to death by a helper engine that derailed in the tunnel; first rail accident in the tunnel and “died instantly”
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Section 13, Block 6, Lot 12, Grave 1
• Headstone: Monument located and confirmed.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 183279597
• Other Information: Martin was an engineer on the second section of the first train to run on schedule through the tunnel on opening day in February 1928.
  • The Moffat Tunnel’s early operating years were not only a triumph of engineering—they were also a reminder that, inside a confined mountain bore, even a single mechanical failure could turn instantly catastrophic. One of the most sobering examples occurred when a Moffat helper engine derailed within the tunnel, killing engineer Martin Callahan and inflicting fatal injuries on fireman Charles Lee Root. Reports describe the locomotive leaving the rails and slamming into the tunnel’s hard wall, releasing scalding steam in an environment where there was nowhere to run, little room to maneuver, and no easy way for help to reach the scene. Callahan’s death was immediate and violent. He was described as crushed and scalded to death when the engine jumped the track inside the bore. Root, however, lived long enough to embody the tunnel’s stark reality: rescue depended on someone getting word out. Despite being severely scalded, Root forced himself through the darkness—variously described as a mile to a mile and a half—to reach West Portal and report the wreck. The act is difficult to overstate. Inside the tunnel, injury did not simply mean pain and trauma; it meant heat, steam, disorientation, and distance—conditions that made survival hinge on sheer endurance. Root was transported from West Portal to St. Luke’s Hospital in Denver, where he later died of his injuries. He was 47 years old, lived at 3328 Bryant Street, and was described as a native of Colorado, born in Wheat Ridge. He left behind his wife, Grace Root, and six children. Callahan, described as a Moffat Road engineer associated with Tabernash and formerly an Arvada resident, had been employed on the railroad since 1915—a seasoned man whose death underscored how experience could not fully insulate workers from the tunnel’s hazards. The incident also revealed something structural about the Moffat Tunnel’s role in Colorado life: a derailment inside the bore was not merely an industrial accident—it could disrupt the entire line. The wreck blocked tunnel traffic long enough to delay at least one scheduled train, illustrating how the tunnel functioned as both a marvel and a choke point. In that sense, the story of Callahan and Root belongs to the broader history of the tunnel itself: a modern transportation corridor built on courage, routine labor, and the ever-present risk that, in a place as unforgiving as a mountain tunnel, the margin for error was vanishingly thin.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Martin Callahan, please let us know.

#5 | 1937 | Charles Lee Root

• Age: 47
• Birth: Thursday, October 3, 1889
• Project/Incident: pushing a train over the apex from West Portal, (rail operations)
• Date of Death: Tuesday, February 16, 1937
• Mechanism (event): severely scalded on Saturday, February 13 and died several days later; staggered through 1.5 miles to carry the news about the engineer (see above)
• Manner: accident
• Burial: Crown Hill Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Block 55, Plot 73, Grave C-3
• Headstone: Monument located and confirmed.
• Find A Grave Memorial: 291555011
• Other Information: The Moffat Tunnel’s early operating years were not only a triumph of engineering—they were also a reminder that, inside a confined mountain bore, even a single mechanical failure could turn instantly catastrophic. One of the most sobering examples occurred when a Moffat helper engine derailed within the tunnel, killing engineer Martin Callahan and inflicting fatal injuries on fireman Charles Lee Root. Reports describe the locomotive leaving the rails and slamming into the tunnel’s hard wall, releasing scalding steam in an environment where there was nowhere to run, little room to maneuver, and no easy way for help to reach the scene. Callahan’s death was immediate and violent. He was described as crushed and scalded to death when the engine jumped the track inside the bore. Root, however, lived long enough to embody the tunnel’s stark reality: rescue depended on someone getting word out. Despite being severely scalded, Root forced himself through the darkness—variously described as a mile to a mile and a half—to reach West Portal and report the wreck. The act is difficult to overstate. Inside the tunnel, injury did not simply mean pain and trauma; it meant heat, steam, disorientation, and distance—conditions that made survival hinge on sheer endurance. Root was transported from West Portal to St. Luke’s Hospital in Denver, where he later died of his injuries. He was 47 years old, lived at 3328 Bryant Street, and was described as a native of Colorado, born in Wheat Ridge. He left behind his wife, Grace Root, and six children. Callahan, described as a Moffat Road engineer associated with Tabernash and formerly an Arvada resident, had been employed on the railroad since 1915—a seasoned man whose death underscored how experience could not fully insulate workers from the tunnel’s hazards. The incident also revealed something structural about the Moffat Tunnel’s role in Colorado life: a derailment inside the bore was not merely an industrial accident—it could disrupt the entire line. The wreck blocked tunnel traffic long enough to delay at least one scheduled train, illustrating how the tunnel functioned as both a marvel and a choke point. In that sense, the story of Callahan and Root belongs to the broader history of the tunnel itself: a modern transportation corridor built on courage, routine labor, and the ever-present risk that, in a place as unforgiving as a mountain tunnel, the margin for error was vanishingly thin.
• Community or family contributions welcome: if you have information to share about Charles Lee Root, please let us know.

BRINGING THEM HOME

In the end, these men weren’t chasing fame or glory. They were building something that would outlast them, trusting that someone, someday, would remember the price that was paid. That’s what drives me now—to find them and to name them. If their names are lost, the mountain wins twice.

Each discovery, each name, is a promise that their work, their story, their courage, and their sacrifice will not fade. To me, these men are not figures in a ledger or faded ink on brittle paper—or even a line in this digital archive. They’re my boys, and I have to bring them home—not to a cemetery, but to the recognition they were denied, and to remind us what their work still means and why it still matters a century later. Every fragment I uncover restores their place in the story of the tunnel and in the history they helped build.

They gave everything so that others could pass through that mountain in safety and speed. The least I can do is make sure their names are remembered for what they built and what it cost.

B. Travis Wright, MPS

The primary purpose of our work is to inform the public.

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