Rock Island Wreck Site, 1894

The train had left Fairbury at 7:30 that evening, due in Lincoln about two hours later. After the crash, police found spikes pulled from the trestle, wrench marks on the rail, crowbar gouges in the ties and a 40-pound crowbar in the grass. George Washington Davis, a Black man, was arrested within two days; he said he had run four miles from a club in Lincoln to see the wreck, and his account did not fit the timeline. Members of Lincoln's Black community vouched for him. His first jury deadlocked, and the second convicted him of second-degree murder.

What the plaque says

Rock Island Wreck Site, 1894 A northbound Rock Island train was derailed from this trestle on August 9, 1894, resulting in a crash, massive fire, and the deaths of eleven passengers and crew, despite the heroic action of Harry Foote, brakeman, who rescued many. G. W. Davis, convicted of the crime in 1895, was paroled ten years later by Governor John Mickey, who noted "grave doubts" as to his guilt. Aside from questions of guilt, Davis's motive and whether he acted alone also remain matters of conjecture. Placed by Joel Williamsen and Family Nebraska State Historical Society, 2010

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Nebraska State Capitol — 4.4 mi
  Bertram Goodhue's 400-foot tower on the prairie, built in four phases from 1922 to 1932 and paid off on completion, home of the only one-house legislature in the country.
• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 28 mi
  Two hangar-sized halls beside I-80 near Ashland holding the bombers and reconnaissance planes of the command that ran America's nuclear force from Offutt, south of Omaha, from 1948 to 1992.

More markers nearby

• The Lincoln Regional Center — 2.7 mi
• The Ferguson House — 4.4 mi
• Nebraska Statehood Memorial — 4.4 mi
• County-City Building — 4.4 mi