On November 16, 1944, a bomber crashed midway between Burlington Jct. and Tarkio. The crew of 13 parachuted out alive, although some cattle died. The story is probably much bigger than the Army wanted to let people know, and the folks on the ground had heartbreaking stories of their own.
The army labeled this a 4-engine B-25. However, it was more likely a four-engine B-29 (the plane used on Hiroshima); the B-25 had a maximum crew of 6 and only two engines. The crashed plane had 13 people, which is the range for the bigger B29. Further, the plane was departing from Herington Air Field in Kansas, where the B-29s were prepped. The Army treated the event super secret, cleaning up the ruins site in 3 days and demanding people return any souvenir pieces they found or face federal prosecution. The B-29s were built at what today is Offutt Air Force Base, and the plane that crashed was flying in from Nebraska (with many of the parachutes floating into Nebraska)
The crash is generally considered to have occurred just across the Atchison County line, although the Burlington Junction fire department was first to respond. Further, both farmers on both farms died in Burlington Jct. Christopher Columbus “Lum” Dunfee, on whose land the worst of the damage occurred, had just lost his son in 1943 in an accident at Stockton Air Field in California, and was the fourth son to die in World War II in the Dale Township of Atchison County (between Bilby Ranch and Fairfax).
