The fifteen-year-old who crawled across a storm-wrecked railroad bridge to stop a passenger train, and became an Iowa legend.
On a stormy July night in 1881, near Moingona in central Iowa, fifteen-year-old Kate Shelley saw a railroad engine plunge into a flood-swollen creek when a bridge gave way. Knowing a passenger express was due, she set out to warn it.
She crawled across the storm-damaged, tie-only Des Moines River railroad bridge in the dark and rain to reach the Moingona station and stop the train: saving hundreds of lives.
Kate Shelley became a national heroine, honored by the railroad and the Iowa legislature. The towering Kate Shelley High Bridge near Boone: long one of the highest double-track railroad bridges in the U.S.: carries her name.
Her story remains one of Iowa's most beloved.
The fifteen-year-old who crawled across a storm-wrecked railroad bridge to stop a passenger train, and became an Iowa legend.
Kate Shelley was from Moingona, Iowa.
1863–1912.
Curious about your own family's story? We trace it through the public record and write it up as a documented history.
This profile presents only publicly reported facts, drawn from the sources above. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the family or its companies.
Portrait: Wikimedia Commons (public domain or freely licensed).