The story of Kate Shelley’s heroics sounds like something straight out of Hollywood: late evening, torrential rains and a violent thunderstorm, a washed-out railroad bridge, and Kate, the seventeen-year-old heroine, crawling on her hands and knees across a 671-foot-long railroad bridge to save the midnight express and its 200 passengers from a tragic fate. Quite fittingly, she was rewarded with everything from a free lifetime pass on the railroad to the honor of having a very impressive bridge named after her, the Kate Shelley High Bridge, located just west of Boone, the longest and highest double-track railroad bridge in the country.

The more detailed story goes like this: Kate Shelley, her mother, and her four younger siblings (Kate’s father died when she was only fourteen) lived in a small house on the banks of Honey Creek, right beside the railroad bridge. On July 6, 1881, a fierce rainstorm caused flooding, which threatened the Shelley’s barn and home. The storm raged on into the night, and Kate and her mom stayed up to keep watch on the swollen creek as the younger children slept. Some time before midnight they heard a tremendous crunching sound as the bridge over Honey Creek, weakened by the floodwaters, gave way beneath a pusher engine with a crew of four, sent from Moingona to test the tracks as far as Boone.

Kate knew the Chicago-bound midnight express, due to pass from the west over first the Des Moines River Bridge and then the now washed-out Honey Creek Bridge, had to be stopped. In the thunder and lightning and torrential rain, she set out with a lantern for Moingona to alert the stationmaster. Though the station house was only a mile away, in between was the 50-foot-high Des Moines River Bridge, the raging floodwaters just yards below the tracks. Its cross ties were laid almost 3 feet apart to discourage people from walking across it. So Kate crawled. From timber to timber, an extinguished lantern clutched tightly in her hand, the flood-swollen waters of the Des Moines roaring below her, the powerful storm winds threatening to topple her from the bridge, Kate crawled the 671 perilous feet on her hands and knees. When she finally made it to the Moingona station, she was so exhausted that her speech was nearly incomprehensible. The men at the station reportedly thought she had gone crazy, but then they understood: “Stop the express—the Honey Creek Bridge is down!”

After the deed, Kate weathered a media onslaught and didn’t get out of bed for thirty days. She received gifts of money and goods from passengers, the State of Iowa ($200), and the Chicago-Northwestern Railroad ($100, a half barrel of flour, half a load of coal, a gold watch, and a lifetime pass), and was offered free tuition at Simpson College in Indianola, where she planned to study to become a teacher. In 1903, after teaching for a number of years in Boone County, Kate was offered the job of stationmaster at Moingona, the very site of her heroics, and she served there until 1910, receiving so many visitors requesting her autograph and photo that she had hundreds of postcards of herself made up, which she sold, according to one report, “at a very small profit.”

Located a few miles west of Boone and just a stone’s throw away from the now-abandoned bridge Kate crossed that fateful night back in 1881, the Kate Shelley High Bridge, a steel-beam structure 186 feet high and stretching over a half mile between bluffs along the Des Moines River, looks far more Western than Midwestern. Completed in 1901, the bridge has been in operation for more than a hundred years and still sees quite a bit of traffic, an average of fifty trains a day. The Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad even offers a daily 12-mile trip in vintage 1920s rail cars, offering a breathtaking view of the bridge and the Des Moines River valley.

The old railway station at Moingona where Kate worked is now the site of the Kate Shelley Railroad Museum and Park. You can learn more about Kate’s life there—not an easy one, in spite of the generosity of those so impressed by her bravery—and you can even buy postcards of the heroine, sold at a very small profit, of course. Kate Shelley would have approved.

For more information about the Kate Shelley Railroad Museum, located at 1198 232nd Street in Moingona, call (515) 432-1907. The Kate Shelley High Bridge is 3 miles west of Boone on J Avenue. A replacement bridge (this one made of concrete) is being built beside it and is scheduled for completion sometime in 2009. (Even though it will be a little less high than the old High Bridge, it’ll still be pretty high, and still retain the title of highest double-track trestle in the United States.) Follow Eighth Street west to the T intersection with Marion Avenue. Take a right onto Marion, cross the railroad tracks, and then take a left onto 198th Road. Follow the signs to the Kate Shelley High Bridge.

For more information about the Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad, located at 225 Tenth Street in Boone, call (800) 626-0319. The railroad offers weekday train rides over the bridge at 1:30 p.m. and twice-daily weekend and holiday rides at 1:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.

(Courtesy of Eric Jones and Dan Coffey with Berit Thorkelson)