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“My mother was standing looking out of the window when the explosion occurred and the glass shattered,” said Charles Hatch.

It was 2:45 in the morning, May 14, 1888, and Charles, 16, and his mother had been awakened by the sound of a ground-shaking crash and a loud commotion coming from the Fountain, Colo. railroad yard.

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The Charles and Elizabeth Hatch House is the only property in the town of Rogue River listed on the National Register of Historic Places. After Charles and Elizabeth died, the house was used by the school district and for a while by the Rogue River Press newspaper.

In 1986, it was acquired by a group of residents who transformed it into today’s Woodville Museum, located at 199 First St. in Rogue River.

The northbound “Thunderbolt,” a six-car Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe train, had just come to a stop, its passengers not knowing the terror that was rolling their way.

Thirteen miles to the north, in Colorado Springs, five cars and a caboose had been unhitched from a long freight train.

Someone, the company blamed a “tramp,” released brakes and the cars broke loose, beginning a dash down the long grade toward Charlie Hatch’s home in Fountain.

The runaway cars smashed into the “Thunderbolt,” the caboose and a tank car filled with naphtha, shattering on impact.

The oil scattered over the depot, the passenger train and nearby houses. In an instant, everything was in flames.

Then someone realized that the last car of the runaway was loaded with explosive powder and shouted for everyone to run away.

As the Hatches watched from their window, 17,000 pounds of powder exploded in a blast heard 20 miles away.

The Baptist church was off its foundation. The school and some business buildings were damaged. Twenty houses, the depot and other railroad buildings were flattened.

At least four people were killed, including “a tramp in the caboose.”

Among the nearly 20 people reported injured were Mrs. Hatch and Charles, who suffered cuts about their heads and shoulders. Charles also had a broken hip and, although they were listed in serious condition, both survived. Charles never forgot that night.

He arrived in Jackson County in 1890, spending most of the next 10 years of his life as a quartz miner near Woodville, today’s Rogue River. When times were tough, he took on other jobs, and while delivering groceries, he met his future wife, Elizabeth Moore. They married in 1894.

Although by 1899 Charles and Elizabeth had finally settled in Woodville, a number of times over the previous years they had traveled back to Colorado, where the first of their four sons was born in 1896.

With a growing family, Charles gave up mining and set up a blacksmith shop and livery stable in Woodville.

By 1909, he had built a house just a block north of the business district. For months, he would sweat all day at his anvil, then walk home and begin hammering together the family home.

In 1910, when Woodville residents voted to incorporate the town, Charles was elected to the city council, and a year later his popularity secured his re-election.

Charles and Elizabeth watched their sons grow up under the trees they had planted by hand. They were home and would never leave again.

When Charles died in 1949, followed by Elizabeth in 1962, neither could have known that they had left an historic landmark.

In July of this year, the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office placed the “Charles and Elizabeth Hatch Residence” on the National Register of Historic Places.

Editor’s Note: Last week we told you about the smell of popcorn in the old Medford Woolworth Building. Doris Grosch of Eagle Point gave us a call and, with a big smile, let us know we “were all wet!” The Medford Woolworth never made popcorn. Doris ought to know. She worked there from 1950 until they closed the doors. Sorry, Doris. That’s what comes of growing up in the Willamette Valley.

Writer Bill Miller lives in Shady Cove. Reach him at newsmiller@yahoo.com.

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