When 'Bloody 301' earned its nickname

EASTOVER — Sixty years later, the memories are still clear, caked in blood and mud and the lingering smell of burned flesh.

Why it happened — why a truck jammed with farm workers pulled in front of a loaded truck with horrific results — is less clear. The driver responsible was flung from the truck's cab and crushed along with half of the 41 passengers he was hauling.

"It's a mystery, and it'll stay a mystery," said Vance Melvin. Now 84, Melvin lives less than a half-mile from the site of what remains the deadliest crash in North Carolina history. "Why did he do it?

"I don't remember a whole lot these days, but I remember that day. I couldn't forget if I tried."

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Before Interstate 95, there was U.S. 301. A long, thin ribbon of aggregate, the road got its official number in the early 1930s.

Before long, it gained an unofficial nickname: Bloody 301. After World War II, the road began carrying more traffic than it was designed to handle. Wrecks were common through the Carolinas on 301, and folks living along the road in Eastover were used to hearing ambulances barreling up the road.

"It wasn't as busy as I-95 or anything, but a lot of people used it," said Johnny Hubbard. Now 84, the Falcon resident was one of the surveyors for I-95, which replaced 301. "But wrecks, there were plenty.''

U.S. 301 also was a main route for migrant crews, seasonal workers who traveled up the East Coast picking vegetables. Often packed like cattle onto the backs of large trucks, they'd leave temporary camps before daybreak and work all day in local fields.

That's where a crew of 41 workers, most from southern Florida, were jammed into an 8-by-15-foot paneled pen on the back of a 1 1/2-ton truck on the morning of June 6, 1957. A 20-year-old driver, Thomas Mackey, pulled out of a camp near Mount Olive, headed east on what is now U.S. 13 for bean fields near Dunn. About 7 a.m., the truck reached a stop sign at a Y-turn near the Eastover-Central Elementary School nine miles north of Fayetteville.

The truck didn't stop, instead taking a sharp right turn onto 301 into the path of a tractor-trailer loaded with potatoes. Witnesses said the potato truck's driver, Gilbert Peters, had no chance to stop in time.

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The day before, Hubbard had returned to Fayetteville from his honeymoon with his wife, Joilet. His boss, Fayetteville funeral director Oscar Breece, told him to take the week off and relax.

Hubbard was just waking up when the phone rang. It was his boss calling him in.

"He said get dressed as quick as I could, and get into work," Hubbard said. "And he said 'Put on a T-shirt and khakis. Don't wear anything fancy.' That's when I knew something bad had happened."

At the same time, J.F. DeVane of Fayetteville was called into work. He was one of three drivers for the town's ambulance service. The other two drivers had already been called out for "a bad wreck," DeVane recalled. "So I was the driver who stayed behind in case anything else happened.

"Before long, they radioed for the third ambulance. Everyone, every car was being called to this wreck, and all they could tell us was that it was really bad."

In nearby Vander, Tommy Crumpler was pulling out of his driveway to take his daughter, Joyce Fisher,  to work.

"He was with the volunteer fire department," said Fisher, "when the fire truck pulled up blowing its horn. Daddy was part of the volunteer fire department and they said they needed him now."

"We didn't know how bad it was until we got close."

For Melvin, it was just a quick hike up 301, where the only traffic was shrieking ambulances.

"That's all that was coming and going," he said. "They had shut down 301 in Fayetteville."

"When I got there ... oh, Lord! There was people lying everywhere, all dead. Just bodies laying everywhere, some burnt, all of them bloody."

The impact shredded the cab of the farm truck, puncturing the gas tank and creating a wall of fire, according to witnesses. Everyone in the cabin probably died instantly.

The potato truck spun sideways, landing on its right side across the highway. The impact splintered the wooden stake walls of the truck, flinging workers onto the highway or smashing them between the two trucks. The road became blocked with bodies and flaming debris.

"You couldn't hardly step around there for being on a body," said Dwight Lockamy in The Fayetteville Observer's story that day. Lockamy operated a filling station near Fayetteville, and was coming to work.

Cumberland County Sheriff L.L. Guy was the first officer on the scene. By then, an Army doctor, Ralph Campbell, had already begun administering first aid. He had been traveling on 301 when the trucks collided. Campbell organized a triage operation, scrambling among the injured and directing officers to cover the dead.

By the time ambulances were able to arrive, the Eastover fire truck had put out the fire. As the injured and dead were removed, the fire crew stayed to wash blood off the highway. Rescue workers complained that the blood made walking difficult as they tried to move the bodies.

"When we arrived, blood was running in the ditches," Hubbard said. "One of the ambulances got stuck, and people were helping push it out of the mud.

"There was mud and blood flying everywhere."

Eighteen workers died on the roadway that morning. About two dozen survivors were taken to Highsmith Hospital in Fayetteville and Betsy Johnson Hospital in Dunn. More than half arrived in critical condition and three, including an infant, died later. The death toll eventually reached 21. At the time, it was the worst highway accident in American history, and it remains the deadliest crash ever in North Carolina.

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A week later, 14 of the dead still hadn't been identified, leading the county to authorize local funeral homes to "give them a decent and proper burial."

It also was determined that, while the driver of the migrant truck was at fault in causing the wreck, the practice of "packing" migrant workers into trucks was not illegal. According to a report from the state Employment Security Commission at the time, officials had no legal right to stop trucks overloaded with workers, unless the vehicle exceeded legal road weight.

"That wreck changed the law," Hubbard said. "Things ain't like that anymore."

The county health officer, M.T. Foster, determined that Mackey, the driver of the migrant truck, had not been drinking and was not under the influence of drugs when the wreck occurred.

"So the question remains," said Melvin, looking down the long, straight stretch of U.S. 301. "Why? Why didn't he stop? How could you miss that truck coming up at you?"

He sat back on his porch and rubbed his eyes. "We can all guess ... but only God knows."

Staff writer Chick Jacobs can be reached at cjacobs@fayobserver.com or 486-3515.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: When 'Bloody 301' earned its nickname