Looking back: Pocatello man invents locomotive safety device, and five people die in two separate area plane crashes

Affectionately christened “The Doll House” is the building on the north side of the Burley Municipal Airport, occupied by personnel of the CAA Interstate Airway Communications Station. The main part of the structure, 14×18 feet, houses a 13-man crew responsible for ’round the clock operation. Atop the tiny building is the weather vane, and there is other equipment available with which weather forecasts are made. Caption dated July 17, 1947. | Courtesy The Burley Herald IDAHO FALLS — EastIdahoNews.com is looking back at what life was like during the week of Aug. 25 to Aug. 31 in east Idaho history. 1900-1925 POCATELLO — A Pocatello man invented a locomotive safety device that was being called “the most important safety appliances for locomotive boilers ever conceived,” The Bingham County News reported on Aug. 29, 1912, from an article originally published in The Pocatello Tribune. The invention was created by “a recognized mechanical genius” named Richard J. Hogan, who was one of the owners of a Pocatello grocery store at the time and who had worked in the railroad machine shops. His invention was allegedly designed to make locomotive boiler explosions impossible. “Whenever the water in a boiler becomes lower than the danger point, an automatic attachment extinguishes the fire in the firebox and prevents a dropping of the crown sheet (which is the plate that forms the top of the firebox of a fired steam boiler),” the article reads. According to the official report of the United States Commissioner of Patents, letters patent for the safety device had been issued to Hogan in accordance with his “model drawings, plans and specifications.” Those items were filed with his letters patent application on Sept. 11, 1911. An inspector for the Interstate Commerce Commission saw the invention in action in 1911. He believed that when the commission became aware of the invention, they would order it to be installed, under the safety appliance law, on every locomotive in America. “Should this be done, the inventor is certain to become a millionaire,” the paper wrote. 1926-1950 ISLAND PARK — Thieves stole the tires off a car in Island Park during the night, The Rigby Star reported on Aug. 27, 1942. A Pontiac car was parked near a cabin when the tires were removed around 1 a.m., according to a witness who watched the thieves in action. The witness was sitting in a car a short distance away from the scene when she said she thought she saw someone having trouble with their tires. “(That) was not the case at the time but it certainly proved true for the owner of the car the next morning,” The Rigby Star mentioned. The paper added, “People who go out for outings now should take heed and watch their cars closely for many will resort to taking tires from cars so that they may continue to travel.” 1951-1975 BURLEY — Two out-of-state men were being held in the city jail after being involved in a knife attack, The Burley Herald reported on Aug. 28, 1958. Ralph R. Philion, 43, of California, and Cecil W. Whitfield, 18, of North Carolina were the two men in the incident. A police report said the two men were sharing a room in a local hotel when an argument broke out. It’s not clear what the argument was over but Philion allegedly pulled out a knife and threatened Whitfield with it. Philion then dropped the knife and Whitfield picked it up and stabbed the older man in the stomach. Whitfield went to the police station and reported the incident to the desk sergeant, who placed him in custody. Officers went to the hotel room where they found Philion and took him to Cottage Hospital for treatment. Once he was released from the hospital, he was placed in jail. The two men were charged with distributing the peace pending further investigation. 1976-2000 MORELAND — Five people were dead after two separate plane crashes near American Falls and Moreland, the Idaho State Journal reported on Aug. 29, 1976. A single-engine plane crashed and burned seven miles northwest of American Falls. Power County coroner Bud Kelly said the pilot Dick Baker, of Alaska, and his three passengers Bob, Judy and Marvin Baker, all of whom were from Emmett, Idaho, were killed. Brothers Dick and Bob, along with Bob’s wife Judy and their young son Marvin were flying from Emmett to Preston for their father’s funeral. Mechanical problems apparently forced Dick to land in a field. After fixing the problem, Dick moved the plane onto a roadway for takeoff but failed to clear high-voltage power lines along the road, according to Stacy Nelson, a witness who told the Journal. Nelson said the plane touched one line causing it to make a sharp turn that barely missed hitting a nearby house. As the plane was pulling out of that turn, it clipped the top wire on another pole. The tail and landing gear hit the hot wire and the plane immediately burst into a “ball of flames” and crashed to the ground. The four “badly charred bodies” could not be recovered for more than an hour. Richard Gregersen, American Falls airport manager, collects pieces of a light plane that crashed and burned Friday morning seven miles northwest of there, killing four people. The dead are pilot Dick Baker, Mt. McKinley, Alaska, and passengers, Bob, Judy and Marvin Baker, all of Emmett. Gregersen went through the remains of the charred one-engine plane Saturday morning as part of the FAA investigation. See story. Caption dated Aug. 29, 1976. | Courtesy Idaho State Journal Shortly after that plane crash, another plane went down. Dean Parks, a Blackfoot farmer, was a passenger on the plane. He was killed after the twin-engine plane crashed into a grain field one mile northwest of Moreland, Idaho. He was transported to the hospital where he died shortly after. The pilot and owner of the plane, Ron Blair, of Taber, Idaho, was taken to a hospital where he was recovering from leg injuries. Two other passengers, Raymond Parks, Dean’s brother, and John Chidester, a Blackfoot real estate agent, were treated and released from a local hospital. Blair said the left engine stopped running and the other engine wasn’t enough to hold the plane in the air. The plane was flying to Blackfoot when it fell to the ground, skidded and finally stopped in a small ditch. The Federal Aviation Administration was investigating both plane crashes. The post Looking back: Pocatello man invents locomotive safety device, and five people die in two separate area plane crashes appeared first on East Idaho News.
Source: eastidahonews.com