Indian Trails improvements dedicated

Standing at the entrance to the massive culverts over the Ashtabula River, one can’t help but wonder why providence selects some of the world’s most beautiful spots as the stages for grizzly disasters.

It was at this spot, a short walk from East 24th Street in Ashtabula, that 97 persons lost their lives in the Ashtabula Train Disaster of Dec. 29, 1876. To say “lost their lives” is too euphemistic and fails to impart a sense of the horror that occurred in this otherwise beautiful valley, for here, in the dark and cold, adults and children alike were imprisoned in wreckage, bones broken and bodies held tight to the river, steel and wood, awaiting flames to torture them to death.

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