The fifteen-year-old who crawled across a storm-wrecked railroad bridge to stop a passenger train — and became an Iowa legend.
On a stormy July night in 1881, near Moingona in central Iowa, fifteen-year-old Kate Shelley saw a railroad engine plunge into a flood-swollen creek when a bridge gave way. Knowing a passenger express was due, she set out to warn it.
She crawled across the storm-damaged, tie-only Des Moines River railroad bridge in the dark and rain to reach the Moingona station and stop the train — saving hundreds of lives.
Kate Shelley became a national heroine, honored by the railroad and the Iowa legislature. The towering Kate Shelley High Bridge near Boone — long one of the highest double-track railroad bridges in the U.S. — carries her name.
Her story remains one of Iowa's most beloved.
The fifteen-year-old who crawled across a storm-wrecked railroad bridge to stop a passenger train — and became an Iowa legend.
Kate Shelley was from Moingona, Iowa.
1863–1912.
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Portrait: Wikimedia Commons (public domain or freely licensed).