Family History Detectives

One of my family's favorite TV shows is History Detectives. The website allows you to submit your own mystery that might be chosen for a future show.

Here is what we submitted on September 19, 2005:

Yellowstone National Park Auto Accident in 1927

This case will allow you to showcase the beauty and significance of the first national park, Yellowstone, as well as its architecture. In 1927, my great-grandfather Worth Tucker left his family and failed farm in Salt Lake City, Utah to do construction work on Old Faithful Lodge. His work finished on November 5, 1927. While riding in the back of a Graham truck from Old Faithful to the train station in West Yellowstone the body of the truck fell off the chassis causing some of the truck’s contents to fall on Worth. This caused a broken back and internal injuries. Worth died later while in transit to the hospital in Livingston, Montana.

I have a copy of the accident report and some information on the Old Faithful Lodge. I would like to know as much about Worth’s work in Yellowstone as possible. I would like to know what parts of the lodge he might have worked on and if they are still
around today. Are there any pictures of Worth at Yellowstone? There are also stories about Worth’s family receiving compensation for the accident. Is there any record of this and was it paid by the construction contractors or the park service? I have some old carpenter tools and want to know which of those might have been used by my ancestor at Yellowstone.

Our family loves History Detectives including our children. We have done some of the research ourselves as the result of a family vacation to Yellowstone National Park this last summer.

Who knows, maybe our story will be chosen.

When we are doing genealogy as a family we call ourselves the Family History Detectives.