THE HISTORY OF DUTCHMAN'S CURVE

I just went to Camp Widjiwagen last week and I really want to blog about it. but it will take a while, so I will save that for tomorrow. But, I'm gonna tell you about something awesome I did today. 

Our friend Betsey Thorpe, who wrote a book, "The Day The Whistles Cried" was hosting a tour of the "Dutchman's Curve" at Richland Creek Greenland. It was about an event that happened 100 years ago (exactly on Monday) when two trains crashed into each other on July 9th, 1918. 

I learned several facts and here they are: 1) Near the same place where it happened 4 kids were scalped by a Native American because their families were taking over their land. 2) More Africans Americans died in the train wreck than white people because they were in the area closest to the front of the train behind the locomotive (the dangerous section). If it was modern day the death's (101) would have been more evenly divided. 3) I asked why they called it Duchman's Curve and our friend David Ewing who was there said that the people who built the railroad/bridge were from Germany and said in their German language that they were from "Deutschland" so the Nashvillian's thought they were Dutch and called it "Dutchman's Curve". It was really dangerous on that curve because the two trains couldn't see each other coming and collided head-on. It was the deadliest train crash in U.S history and it happened right here in Nashville. 

My Grandbobby actually in the 1970's or 80's interviewed survivors who were little when it happened (and old when he interviewed them) and it's very interesting. He put some of the interviews in a song he wrote with friend Rafe Vanhoy that is incredible called "The Great Nashville Railroad Disater" which G-Bob recorded and was also recorded by David Allan Coe. Hre's the link to Grandbobby's version of the song https://youtu.be/7ZauKqf3N7c  Betsey played it at her dinner event last night and some people cried because they heard the emotion in the recordings of the real people involved who were included in it. Grandbobby is donating the recordings to the Nashville Public  Library so people can hear that history.

I'd like to give thanks to Betsey Thorpe, Paul Clements (who led our tour and told us lots of interesting history about the area) and David Ewing.

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