Historical Marker
Explosion Rocks Tolar
Tolar, De Baca County · New Mexico
Tolar had about thirty people when the train blew up. The town began in 1907 as a stop on the Santa Fe's Belen Cutoff, and its station had already closed in 1933. Jess Brown was a Tolar resident and a father of seven; he died on the way to the hospital in Melrose, and the railroad later paid his widow, Pauline, $17,500. The panel was dedicated in November 2014, with text by the historian Randy Dunson. The undercarriage beside it, thrown some 500 feet south of the track, was given by John Eastwood.
What the plaque says
Official Scenic Historic Marker Explosion Rocks Tolar At noon on November 30, 1944, a World War II supply train hauling 165 five-hundred-pound bombs headed for the Pacific Theater derailed in Tolar. The train caught fire and the bombs ex- ploded. The blast, which leveled nearly every building in town, could be heard 60 miles away. It vaporized 500 feet of track and sent a 1,500- pound axle crashing through a store and rolling out the back. One person, Jess Brown, was killed in the explosion after a piece of iron shrapnel struck his head. Tolar is two miles east of here.
Where it stands
34.44954, -103.96847 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Bosque Redondo Memorial — 13 miThe state site at Fort Sumner that for decades told the story of an army post and an outlaw, remade with Diné and Ndé people into a memorial to those held here.