The circus train wreck that left a monument in a Durand cemetery

In the small hours of August 6, 1903, the Great Wallace Shows were leaving Durand after a one-day stand, the circus loaded onto trains in two sections. The first section had stopped in the rail yard west of town. The second came up behind it in the dark, its engineer spotted a red warning light, and he reached for the air brakes — which failed. The engine plowed into the back of the standing train with terrific force, telescoping the rear cars where roustabouts and performers were sleeping.

About two dozen people died, most of them in the wreck and a few more in Detroit hospitals afterward. Nearly a hundred were hurt. The dead included circus animals too: an Arabian horse, three camels, a Great Dane, and an elephant named Maud — small details that have kept the story alive for more than a century, because there’s something uniquely awful about an elephant killed in a Michigan train yard.

Durand was the right town for it to happen in, grimly enough. The place existed because of the rails — one of the busiest junctions in the state, where the Grand Trunk and the Ann Arbor lines crossed — so a railroad tragedy landed in its lap.

Many of the dead were show people far from home, and nine of them were never even identified. The circus passed the hat to bury them, with a rule that nobody could give more than a dollar, so the monument would belong to everyone. The unknown nine lie together under an obelisk at Lovejoy Cemetery, southwest of town. The inscription still reads, plainly: “In memory of the Unknown Dead. Who lost their lives in the Railroad Wreck of the Great Wallace Shows. August 6th, 1903.” You can stand in front of it on a quiet afternoon, out among the corn, and read the names that aren’t there.