Tacoma Trolley Disaster

Nearly a hundred people, passengers on a car bound for this city, were plunged into a gulch at Twenty-sixth and C Streets shortly after 8 o'clock this morning.

Those who were standing on the platform dropped off only to be bruised and wounded by the heavy body of the car, while others inside were killed and maimed before they knew what had happened. The car jumped the track and was smashed to kindling wood in the bottom of the chasm over a hundred feet below. The dead will number nearly three score.

Many of the injured are expected to die at any moment, and others are now in the various hospitals and under the care of their own physicians.

On Wednesday morning, July 4, 1900, 43 passengers are killed and many others are injured and maimed when an overcrowded trolley car carrying more than 100 passengers to downtown Tacoma for the Independence Day Parade, looses traction on the Delin Street grade, jumps the tracks on the “C” Street trestle, and plunges 100 feet into a ravine. The crash is heard for blocks and help arrives quickly, but the pile of twisted wreckage and the steep sides of the ravine make rescue difficult. After the accident is attended to, the huge Fourth of July celebration to usher in the new decade of 1900 continues. This is one of the worst and most appalling streetcar accidents in Washington state history.

The streetcar lines individually had experienced many troubles over their 50-year lifetime, including many buyouts, defaults, takeovers, worker strikes and one notable tragedy. On a rainy July 4, 1900, a trolley jumped the tracks, plunging into a ravine and killing 43 passengers.