Buckner's Trestle

Buckner's Trestle was a one-hundred-foot-long, fifty-foot-high wooden bridge built by the Mississippi Central Railroad in the late 1850s. It was the site of two train wrecks. On February 25, 1870, the 3 p.m. mail carrier left Oxford heading south toward Water Valley. The engine, a baggage car, a mail car, and the first passenger car made it over the trestle before it gave way. The other cars plunged into the ravine below, killing twenty passengers and injuring more than sixty others. On June 10, 1928, the No. 34 train known as the “Bilbo” was heading north toward Oxford from Water Valley. As the engine hit the trestle, its timbers, loosened by heavy rains, shifted and gave way. The wreck injured forty-two passengers, including several University of Mississippi students and faculty.

Oxford, Mississippi · United States