The Death Valley Railroad was a narrow gauge railroad that operated in California's Death Valley.
It was built in 1914 by the Pacific Coast Borax Company to carry borax with the route running from Ryan, California, located just east of Death Valley National Park, to Death Valley Junction, a distance of approximately 20 miles. Regular operation of the railroad stopped in 1928. Much of the railroad ran parallel to what is today State Route 190.
The line was constructed using equipment from the Borate and Daggett Railroad including one of its engines. After this railroad ceased operations, the equipment was transferred to the United States Potash Railroad in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
A locomotive from the railroad is at the Borax Museum at Furnace Creek in Death Valley National Park.
Famous quotes containing the words death, valley and/or railroad:
“Two graves must hide thine and my corse;
If one might, death were no divorce.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)
“Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. There needs no stronger proof of immortality. All things must live in such a light. O Death, where was thy sting? O Grave, where was thy victory, then?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... no other railroad station in the world manages so mysteriously to cloak with compassion the anguish of departure and the dubious ecstasies of return and arrival. Any waiting room in the world is filled with all this, and I have sat in many of them and accepted it, and I know from deliberate acquaintance that the whole human experience is more bearable at the Gare de Lyon in Paris than anywhere else.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)