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photo by Jennifer Robinson
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photo provided by Portage Park District
Headwaters Trail’s wide, limestone-paved path, shaded by oak and beech trees, may be tranquil today — but its history isn’t nearly as peaceful. The 8.5-mile trail replaced a railbed that played host to America’s last great train robbery.
On Nov. 7, 1935, armed with machine guns and explosives, gangster Alvin “Creepy” Karpis prepared to carry out an old-fashioned heist. Just a year prior, he’d engineered the kidnapping of a banker in Minnesota.
“I thought of the great bandits of the old West [like] the James brothers,” Karpis said, according to the spot’s historical marker. “They knocked over trains, and I was going to pull the same stunt.”
As Erie Train No. 626 pulled into the station, loaded with Republic Steel’s payroll, he made his move.
“They robbed the train just inside Garrettsville. They drove up, they fired bullets at the locomotive when it pulled into the depot for a stop, and they threatened to blow it up if the people inside refused to open,” says Jennifer White, education and outreach manager for the Portage Park District.
Karpis and his accomplices made off with over $46,000 in cash and securities — more than $700,000 today.
“J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director at the time, vowed to catch Karpis, and Karpis was eventually apprehended in New Orleans … sentenced to life in prison,” White explains. “The descent of all those FBI officials on the town is how James A. Garfield High School acquired its G-Men mascot name.”
Though no one was killed during the 1935 robbery, other incidents along the trail’s route were more ill-fated. In 1908, a section of train tracks was vandalized by wreckers hoping to cause a derailment. Erie Train No. 19, carrying 150 passengers to Cleveland, left the tracks — leaving two crew members dead and six passengers injured. Later, in July 1949, a steam locomotive’s boiler exploded, causing the deaths of three men.
“There is a rock that the families had placed a number of years ago,” White says, referring to a memorial marker along the trail. “I got a phone call from a descendant of one of the folks that was killed, and they had never visited that location. … That was special to be able to communicate that information and give them a place to come and reflect.”
The past here is heavy, but Headwaters today is meditative. It leads hikers, riders, paddlers and bikers through dense wilderness and across a continental watershed divide — and includes sights such as a small waterfall, wildflowers and wetlands. Visitors might even spot remnants of railroad tracks and remains of another train station — Jeddo Station, which burned down in 1904.
“This one is our oldest and is truly one of the most beautiful,” explains White. “About partway through the trail, anybody that’s hiking or biking along the trail is going to cross from the Lake Erie watershed into the Ohio River watershed.”
Though natural beauty may be a far cry from the site’s rough-and-tumble past, the trail and the community carry on its stories.
“These stories help to piece together what our heritage is and what our history is within our communities,” White says. “It does move you. When you can understand and have a different kind of a connection with a place, or a plant or an animal — you care about it in a different way, and you form a deeper connection with it.”
10647 Freedom St., Garrettsville, portagecounty-oh.gov
