Kate’s notes: I can’t confirm the identity of this William L. Gilleland (there were several who lived during that time period) or where he was truly from but this report appeared in a Pennsylvania paper. “Mammoth Wash” is located in California’s Imperial Valley, so I decided this belonged in news reports of that state.

From the Indiana Evening Gazette
Indiana, Pennsylvania
17 June, 1913

FREED HOOF JUST IN TIME
________________
Another Minute and Traveler on
Trestle Would Have Been Lost

   With a fore leg of his horse caught in a trestle of the Southern Pacific across the Mammoth wash, just across the Colorado river, within a few hundred miles of the end of a 2,300 mile journey, William L. Gilleland almost decided that the end of the long trip was at hand.
   “It was thrilling, since I had timed the trains expected across the span and knew that it was a matter of minutes in getting the animal free or being crushed to death by a limited train that was almost due,” he said as he told the Los Angeles Times of some of the incidents of his long horseback ride from Sheridan, Wyo., to Los Angeles.
   Gilleland says it was an anxious hour when he was forced to move first one leg and then another of his horse to the different ties in an endeavor to extricate the hoof which had been caught in a peculiar manner. “As the moments passed and effort after effort proved futile I began to count the moments to the end, when suddenly the horse tipped to one side, gave a little lurch and was free,” he said. “It was then a race to where it was possible to jump from the trestle and only a few moments after the fast train, speeding along at a terrific rate, tore past.”

-transcription by Kate Maynard, 2012