MILLWOOD — Charles A. Horton was only 23 years old. The World War II veteran was had recently married and had just a few months ago undertaken a new job driving a big rig for the R.E. Oesterling Company out of Butler, Pennsylvania, the nearest town to where Charles grew up in rural Donegal Township.
He was named after his grandfather, Charles Abijah Horton, who had adopted his father, Laverne Horton, in the early 1900s. The family alternated between farming and working on the oil wells of western Pennsylvania. Charles must have seen the solid living that could be made working as an over-the-road trucker. It was the kind of job that would allow him to start raising a family.
Unfortunately for Charles, that was not to be.
Charles Horton was driving a load of 15 tons of sheet steel, all about five by six feet. It was an overnight run, though its original origin and destination were not recorded by reports at the time.
What is known is that Horton was driving north on US 62 in eastern Knox County in the darkest hours before the sunrise on Friday, Oct. 17, 1947.
As Horton approached Millwood from the south, he must have succumbed to road hypnosis and drifted off to sleep. As the highway approached the Kokosing River (as it was designed at that time), it curved slightly to the right for the narrow bridge. The structure was erected by the Mount Vernon Bridge Company in 1898 to make a straight, 179-foot crossing of the river.
It was 4:25 am.
Horton’s semi-trailer plowed into the second vertical brace of the bridge on the left (west) side of the bridge. The impact wrenched the south end of the bridge off its stone pilings, and semi-truck, trailer, and bridge dropped 27.5 feet into the Kokosing. The violence of the initial impact and subsequent plunge sent sheets of steel flying for 200 feet into the river and onto the north bank.
Millwood resident James Mitchell was asleep at his home near the bridge. He was jarred awake by the catastrophic noise of the accident and rushed to the scene. According to Mitchell, as reported in the Mount Vernon News, the truck cab was still on the wooden and steel bridge, while the trailer had fallen in the river.
The truck and bridge were burning so furiously that he was unable to approach it.
First responders gathered at the scene, but the fire prevented any attempt at rescue for 90 minutes. When the cab could finally be opened around daybreak, Knox County coroner Dr. C. L. Harmer and Ohio State Highway Patrolman S. W. Mason, found the body of the driver, burned beyond recognition.
The only way the driver could even be identified was by the license plate of the truck and the random chance of the driver’s log being knocked out of the cab and into the river. The coroner said that Horton died from a skull fractured sustained during the fall.
In all likelihood, he was dead before the truck was consumed in flames.
The log, which went back to June, listed the Oesterling Company, which also proved to be the owner of the vehicle according to the tags. A phone call to Butler, Pennsylvania, confirmed the identity of the driver, who was taken to Dowds Funeral Home.
Hundreds showed up to watch the removal of the truck and bridge Saturday and Sunday. At the same time, the Ohio Fuel Gas Company was busy putting up a temporary gas line to replace the one which had run along the bottom of the bridge. The destruction of the line had left Millwood without gas from 4:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. Friday, and probably contributed to the intensity of the truck fire.
A state maintenance highway supervisor said that a temporary bridge would be erected to replace the downed structure, but the state would be discussing rerouting US 62 over a new, higher bridge, bypassing Millwood and straightening out the road. That redesign was incorporated later, resulting in the current course of US 62. Old 62, the site of the bridge collapse, is now Bridge Street in Millwood.
The change to a straight road and bridge has no doubt saved lives over the years, though the bypass routed some traffic away from the main crossroads in Millwood, which has like many bypassed rural towns, seen the decline and loss of most of its local business.
Only Spearman’s Restaurant still thrives in Millwood, standing at the original intersection of routes 62 and 36, the intersection Charles Horton never reached.
