The Emma Crawford Coffin Race

Amanda McGowan· Host0:01

[birds chirping] We're on the side of a steep, steep mountain in Colorado. It's a summer day, 1929, and two boys visiting town from Texas are making the hike up. This is a tough hike, so probably the boys are keeping their eyes on the ground in front of them, and that's when [suspenseful music] they spot it, a skull. Maybe at first they think it's an animal skull. I mean, that wouldn't be so weird. Animals do die on the sides of mountains, right? But no, taking a closer look, this is definitely from a human. There's even a jaw bone. At first, the boys actually think they're gonna keep this as a souvenir. They wanna mail it back to Texas. But somewhere along the way they get caught. I mean, I imagine it's very suspicious to see two kids trying to wrap up and mail a skull. So the local police step in, they start asking questions. They're worried that something bad might have happened up on the mountain. They send a search crew up to see if they can find anything else where the skull was found, and they do. The local marshal uncovers a bundle of bones. It's carefully wrapped up, and there's even some pieces of a coffin nearby, with a name plate on it. And that's when the townspeople realize, oh, no, this