The Legend of Joe Connolly

Ailes Streeter and Head-On Connolly weren't the only people organizing these staged wrecks. In 1906 approximately 6,000 people paid to see two engines that had been retired from the Salt Lake Railroad crashed together at an agricultural park near downtown Los Angeles. Joe Connolly made a lot of money staging these crashes over the years but his last one took place as the fad was really starting to wane. The engineers tried to extort extra pay from the organizers in the middle of the event.