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creep into the story. I'll try to lay it out very simply. First of all, Kate Shelley didn't crawl across the bridge that bears her name. 1881, when Kate's story took place, was twenty years before the High Bridge existed (it opened in 1901), and the only Des Moines River crossing on the Chicago & Northwestern Main Line (now Union Pacific tracks) was on a bridge about 15 or 20 feet above the river level located at Moingona, Iowa, about 4 miles down the river valley from the current high bridge. On July 6, 1881, a bad thunderstorm washed out a bridge over Honey Creek, EAST of the Des Moines River bridge. Kate Shelley could see this bridge from her family's house, and saw that a helper engine that helped push trains up out of the river valley had backed off the ruined bridge into the floodwaters, killing two crewmen and stranding two others in the water. Kate ran down to the Des Moines River bridge (which was NOT damaged), and in the middle of the night and still during the storm, crawled across this bridge and followed the tracks to the Moingona station, about a half mile west of the river. She told what she'd seen to the station master, who alerted an approaching passenger train to stop. Thus Kate Shelley's actions had saved the lives of all the passengers on this train. She then led rescuers to the two crewmen stranded in the floodwaters, and they were also saved. This video opens on the road into Moingona, and shows the welcome sign ("please have your passports ready") and the sign pointing left to the station that Kate Shelley ran to. Then you can see the informative signs at the west end of the station house that tell the whole story I just told you, and shows an old photo of the bridge that Kate crawled across, as well as a map of the tracks with relevant landmarks pointed out (but the scale on the map is off by a factor of about 4). Next is the whole trail following the old railbed from the station down the half-mile or so to the river. I shot this using a time-lapse camera running at 1 frame per second, so the slightly more than half-mile is covered in about a half-minute. Sorry about the blurriness here. Arriving at the west abutment of the bridge that Kate Shelley crawled across, we look out across the tops of the still-existing stone-block and concrete bridge supports. Following this is a shot taken from a short distance up river and panning from the east bridge abutment clear over to the west abutment (my calculations put this span at around an eighth of a mile). Finally, a shot taken from a few hundred feet down river showing the bridge supports again. Look back now at the old photo at 0:20 showing the bridge intact. Also, read the story on the sign; it has several details I've left out. I hope this helps clear up confusion about such things as versions of the story that have Kate crawling across a washed out High Bridge. I've wondered where exactly this bridge site at Moingona was ever since the 1970s. At that time I drove around gravel roads with a friend who was sure he knew where the bridge had been (he didn't), and a little later visited the Moingona station before the railbed trail to the river had been cleared and labeled. I finally saw the bridge site for the first time this weekend. Check out Google Earth; you can easily seen the bridge supports in the river east of Moingona.