1940 Train-Truck Collision

The plaque counts 34 dead, while reporting on a 2024 book by Juan Carmona and Taylor Seaver de la Fuente gives 29. Newspapers in 1940 printed differing and misspelled names, so the authors rebuilt the list from cemetery and death records. The workers, aged about eight to fifty, were riding to a citrus field when the train hit. Families sued the railroad for about 650,000 dollars and received roughly 14,000 in all, under 1,000 per person. Whether the train sounded its whistle is still debated. Alamo marks March 14 each year.

What the plaque says

1940 Train-Truck Collision On March 14, 1940, at this crossing of Tower Road and the Missouri Pacific rail line occurred an automobile accident resulting in the most fatalities on a Texas highway in the 20th century. An oncoming train collided with a truck carrying more than 40 agricultural workers, killing 34 of the workers, who ranged in age from ten to 48. The neighboring citrus packing plant served as headquarters for rescue operations. The tragedy affected many lives in the Alamo community and across the Rio Grande Valley, resulting in renewed attention to safety issues surrounding railroad crossings and the transportation of agricultural workers. (2002)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 7.1 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.
• Museum of South Texas History — 8.9 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.
• La Lomita Chapel — 14 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.
• Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — 17 mi
  A 587-acre stand of Rio Grande woodland near Mission, once part of a Spanish porción, given to the state by the Bentsen family in 1944 and now headquarters of the World Birding Center.

More markers nearby

• Camp Ebenezer — 1.4 mi
• Tom Mayfield — 2.9 mi
• San Juan Townsite — 3.0 mi
• Donna — 3.6 mi