Qualla: Pikes Creek Tragedy https://qualla.com/pikes-creek-tragedy en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:05 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/c/b/r/6/pikes-creek-tragedy-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Pikes Creek Tragedy https://qualla.com/pikes-creek-tragedy Pikes Creek Tragedy: Introduction https://qualla.com/pikes-creek-tragedy/ Photo credit Hudsonberry, CC BY 4.0. The men who climbed aboard the work train on October 2, 1884 were heading toward a problem, not away from one. Nearly a week of relentless rain had swollen Pikes Creek from its usual meandering trickle into something unrecognizable, and a quarter-mile south of Bayfield, Wisconsin, the creek had torn out a section of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway's Bayfield branch. The line was less than a year old. When word of the washout reached Washburn, the next station south, the railroad dispatched a repair crew -- twenty-two men loaded onto three flatcars with logs and supplies, hauled by a single locomotive. There was no caboose, no crew car. The men rode wherever they could find space: perched on the flatcars, packed into the locomotive cab, and two of them sitting on the cowcatcher at the very front of the engine.

Read more: Pikes Creek Tragedy on Qualla

Image: Hudsonberry | CC BY 4.0

]]> Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/b/r/6/pikes-creek-tragedy-wp/cbr6-pikes-creek-tragedy-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Pikes Creek Tragedy: A Creek That Became a Killer https://qualla.com/pikes-creek-tragedy/ Photo credit Hudsonberry, CC BY 4.0. Pikes Creek drains the hills between Bayfield and Washburn along the south shore of Lake Superior. In ordinary weather, it is a modest stream, the kind of waterway that railroad engineers would have crossed without much thought when they laid the Bayfield branch in 1883. But Octo...

Read more: Pikes Creek Tragedy on Qualla

Image: Hudsonberry | CC BY 4.0

]]> Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/b/r/6/pikes-creek-tragedy-wp/cbr6-pikes-creek-tragedy-a-creek-that-became-a-killer.mp3 0:06 2 full Pikes Creek Tragedy: The Toll in a Small Community https://qualla.com/pikes-creek-tragedy/ Photo credit Hudsonberry, CC BY 4.0. Ten men died. The engineer who was running the train. The conductor overseeing the crew. The brakeman. Seven members of the track gang. Some were killed instantly in the derailment. Others lingered for a day or more, their injuries beyond what the small hospitals in nearby Ashlan...

Read more: Pikes Creek Tragedy on Qualla

Image: Hudsonberry | CC BY 4.0

]]> Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/b/r/6/pikes-creek-tragedy-wp/cbr6-pikes-creek-tragedy-the-toll-in-a-small-community.mp3 0:06 3 full Pikes Creek Tragedy: Coast-to-Coast Headlines, Then Silence https://qualla.com/pikes-creek-tragedy/ Photo credit Hudsonberry, CC BY 4.0. News of the wreck traveled fast. The accident was quickly dubbed the Pikes Creek Tragedy, and newspapers from coast to coast carried the story -- though, as one later account noted, the coverage varied considerably in sensationalism and accuracy. The remoteness of the Bayfield Pe...

Read more: Pikes Creek Tragedy on Qualla

Image: Hudsonberry | CC BY 4.0

]]> Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/b/r/6/pikes-creek-tragedy-wp/cbr6-pikes-creek-tragedy-coast-to-coast-headlines-then-silence.mp3 0:06 4 full Pikes Creek Tragedy: A Marker Against Forgetting https://qualla.com/pikes-creek-tragedy/ Photo credit Hudsonberry, CC BY 4.0. In 2023, nearly 140 years after ten men died on a rain-soaked afternoon along the Lake Superior shore, an ad hoc citizens group raised funds to place a marker near the site of the derailment. It was a small act of recovery -- pulling a name and a date back from the edge of erasur...

Read more: Pikes Creek Tragedy on Qualla

Image: Hudsonberry | CC BY 4.0

]]> Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/c/b/r/6/pikes-creek-tragedy-wp/cbr6-pikes-creek-tragedy-a-marker-against-forgetting.mp3 0:06 5 full