Normal safety procedures called for slowing the train at the top of the Siskiyou Pass to test its brakes before the steep descent into California. On October 11, 1923, the Southern Pacific train #13, called the Oregon–California Express, was slowly laboring up the Siskiyou grade, on its way to San Francisco. Few people realize that the remote mountain wilderness of southern Oregon was the location of many law enforcement firsts in the United States. The crime itself is a story that has been told many times, but much less has been written about the pioneering use of forensic science in the investigation that followed. This cowardly and murderous event outraged America, leading to an intense manhunt. But on a distant October morning in 1923, this was the site of the West’s last great train robbery, committed by three deranged criminals: the DeAutremont brothers. This segment of the Southern Pacific railroad line is all but abandoned today, and walking among the decaying railroad ties and rusting steel tracks, it is hard to imagine that exploding dynamite once filled the air with black smoke, and bloody bodies were left to die on these tracks. Through these Siskiyou Mountains, the railroad line once known as the “Road of a Thousand Wonders” snakes its way toward California, crossing moss-covered ravines on rickety trestles and piercing the mountain ridges with long dark tunnels. Every fall, the maples and dogwoods color the foothills of southern Oregon with yellow and orange highlights, flaring vibrant among the dark green pines.
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