One Windy Day Recalls Another
There is no such thing as coincidence. As if on cue, Mother Nature’s wild side was on full display this evening serving up 40-mph winds as I pondered the tragic fate of the Lincoln Funeral Car. One particularly strong gale seemed to fuse the past with the present and brought to mind March 18, 1911.
It was on that date that a group of boys in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, learned the hard way about playing with fire. Their intentions that Saturday afternoon were not malicious; they were merely burning brush and grass in a backyard. But March winds whip up fast on the prairie, and what began as an innocent burn pile was soon a raging wildfire that would consume 10 entire blocks. Unfortunately for the boys–and for the nation–the Lincoln Funeral Car sat directly in the fire’s path with no way to move it or spare it from the flames. The rail car that carried Abraham Lincoln’s body home to Springfield, Illinois had become, in the words of the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, “the most sacred relic in the United States, outside of the famous Liberty Bell,” but its original purpose was not to serve as a funeral car. It was built to be President Lincoln’s official state coach, the nineteenth-century equivalent of Air Force One. Its richly decorated interior, distinctive exterior color and official ornamentation made it one of the finest passenger cars of its day.
In the years following Abraham Lincoln’s funeral the rail car was periodically put on display and hundreds of thousands of Americans visited it to honor Lincoln’s legacy. By the time it arrived in Columbia Heights, however, the once beautiful executive coach bore very little resemblance to the 1865 version. Just prior to its demise there was talk of moving the wood-framed and mostly gutted rail car to a new location where it could be better cared for and continue to serve as a monument of sorts to the nation’s sixteenth president. The March 18 fire did not completely destroy the car, but it was considered damaged beyond repair and relic hunters were allowed to scavenge for various bits and pieces that have now mostly been lost to history.