Shop: Tolar, NM

Roadside Grave, Tolar, NM

(geneologytrails.com) ... The story begins with Charles and Mozella Trotter moving from Palmer, Oklahoma with their two daughters, Elsie and Charlene, and their 18-month old son Loral Eugene. The family packed their belongings, chartered a boxcar and headed west.
In the passenger car, the stove kept going out and according to Mozella Trotter, it was "cold, cold." She wrapped Loral Eugene tightly in a blanket. ... But the cold and the harsh elements took everyone down with colds; little Loral Eugene became seriously ill. They summoned a doctor who diagnosed bronchial pneumonia. The boy died February 16, 1907. Continued

The Tolar Express

I posted about the explosion at Tolar, back in '44, but just the story and the historical marker, which is a couple of miles from the actual event. This time we took a look at the remains of the town itself. There isn't much left, according to the New Mexico Historical Encyclopedia, "... every building in Tolar was damaged by shrapnel, and several of them were destroyed completely." Like so many little towns in the region, it was already obsolete and, I imagine, most of the residents took their settlements and beat a path to greener pastures.

The Great Tolar Railroad Explosion

Tolar, New Mexico. Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad train between Clovis and Vaughn, New Mexico stopping for water. A brakeman walking the length of the train for inspection (1943, Jack Delano/Library of Congress, FSA/OWI collection)

 

 

 

"At noon on November 30, 1944, a World War II supply train hauling 165 five-hundred-pound bombs headed for the Pacific Theater derailed in Tolar. The train caught fire and the bombs exploded. The blast, which leveled nearly every building in town, could be heard 60 miles away. It vaporized 500 feet of track and sent a 1,500-pound axle crashing through a store and rolling out the back. One person, Jess Brown, was killed in the explosion after a piece of iron shrapnel struck his head. Tolar is two miles east of here."