History
The museum was established by the Fort Smith Streetcar Restoration Association (FSSRA), formed in 1979 to preserve and display transit history relating to Fort Smith. The first museum building was constructed in 1985, on former Missouri Pacific Railroad land, and purchases and donations of property in the 1990s allowed activities and storage to expand onto adjacent parcels. That the organization uses Streetcar in its name but named its museum a Trolley museum is a reflection of the fact that, in American English, the terms streetcar and trolley are used interchangeably. The Fort Smith Trolley Museum (FSTM) opened to the public in 1985, and trolley/streetcar operation began in 1991. FSSRA continues to be the museum's owner and operator.
Read more about this topic: Fort Smith Trolley Museum
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)