An excerpt from Arrow: The History and People of an Idaho Community, Vol. 1

On January 23, 1934, a Northern Pacific night train was headed down the Potlatch Creek canyon toward Lewiston. On the train was Fireman William H. Skidmore. Ed Groseclose was working near the Albright farm above Arrow when the train came through. He had walked off to pick up a stray tie for the crew’s fire, but when the train came through, Skidmore was leaning out the cab window, talking and joking with the crew along the tracks.

A few minutes later, at 3:00 a.m., the train drove onto the bridge over Howard Gulch, and the bridge collapsed under it. The engine plunged 200 feet over the embankment into the swollen Potlatch Creek, tipping over onto the side from which Skidmore had been leaning. Engineer Michael Maloney managed to crawl past the hiss of steam to escape the cab, but he did not know what had become of Skidmore.

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