By Carol Powell

March 13, 1900 began like any other day for the busy Locke household in Prescott. With six children to look after, Mrs. Locke had her hands full, being especially concerned about Elmer, her active 18-month-old toddler. Her husband was David G. Locke, section foreman for the Santa Fe Prescott & Phoenix Railway. The family lived in a typical section house just sixty feet from the main tracks and a quarter of a mile east of the Prescott depot. Like most people that live by train tracks, the family became accustomed to the usual train whistle as the trains left the depot. The whistle that day was prelude to a tragedy.

Baldwin "Tobe" O. Miller was a locomotive engineer with the S.F.P. & P. Tobe, known as a careful engineer, began his basic routine before leaving the station for his mid-afternoon run to Phoenix that day. He looked over the track to see that all was clear before he started up engine # 1 around 3.30 P.M. The passenger train was pulling five cars and was picking up speed as it reached 8-10 miles-per-hour soon after leaving the station. He was at the throttle of the train when it crossed the bridge on a curve west of the station when the train fireman, Allen Love, leaning out the side window, was alarmed and called out to Tobe that there was a child on the tracks just a few feet ahead!

Tobe caught a glimpse of the boy and immediately applied the brakes to stop the train. The fireman couldn’t recall if he was ringing the bell at the time the child was struck but when the train stopped he had the bell cord in his hand. The newspaper account noted "the train could not be stopped and the engine crushed the boy beneath its wheels," cutting him in two and severing one arm from the body. The remains were tenderly gathered up and placed in the baggage car and the train backed to the depot where the father identified the face to be that of his son, Elmer Francis Locke. Elmer, his father a Mason, was buried in the Masonic Cemetery in Prescott.

Ten years later, Tobe left the employment of the S.F.P. & P. Railroad and went to work for the Great Northern Railroad in Washington State, where he was involved in another fatal wreck, this time costing him and his fireman their lives. In studying both newspaper accounts of the accidents, some of the same words were used in describing what happened: "Swinging onto a trestle at Waukee, 60 miles southwest of Spokane, last night Oct. 28 1913 the Great Northern passenger no.1, detoured on account of a rock slide in the Cascades, collided with a work train, hurling Engineer B.O.("Tobe") Miller and his Fireman G.J. Davis to their deaths, the engine crashed 50 feet below. The work train was observed too late to permit the engineer to bring the train to a stop. The engine crashed head on into the work train it leaped clear of the rails all passengers were safe. The train was immediately taken in tow of a locomotive sent to the scene and returned to Marshall Junction." Tobe was only 39 years old. In both of Tobe’s accidents, the train could not be stopped in time to avoid tragedy.

As Tobe boarded passenger train engine #1 in Washington that day, did it seem a little ominous or eerie to him that it was the same train number that he manned the afternoon that Elmer Francis Locke toddled in front of his oncoming train? In those fleeting moments just before impact, Tobe may have had a flashback to that spring day in 1900 in Prescott, Territory of Arizona, when he came around the bend and saw a small boy standing on the tracks. It couldn’t have ever been far from his mind.

(Carol Powell is an historian for the Olmstead-Miller families.)

Read more of Baldwin "Tobe" Miller and his family in Days Past for 4-8-07 and 12-14-03.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(courtesy Carol Powell) Reuse only by permission.

Wreck of Tobe Miller’s engine #1, October 28, 1913 at Waukee, Washington. Tobe and his fireman lost their lives when they were thrown from the engine on impact with a work train on the trestle.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(photo by Alan Krause) Reuse only by permission.

Historian Parker Anderson points to the grave of little Elmer Francis Locke in the Prescott Masonic Cemetery. There is no marker for the grave but this is the location according to the plot plan for the cemetery. No other member of the Locke family is buried here.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(rr209p). Reuse only by permission.

Engine, #2, of the Santa Fe Prescott & Phoenix Railway in the early 1900s is the same type as #1 which struck down Elmer Francis Locke in March of 1900 near the Prescott depot.