Great Depression
The H&S fell on hard times as the Great Depression, the advent of the automobile, improved roads, public subsidies for those roads, and trucks came along in the late 1920s. Freight and passenger traffic declined and the H&S was abandoned in pieces starting with the line segment from Norwich to Clarinda, Iowa, during the height of the Great Depression (December 1935). Other segments abandoned were the Shenandoah to Norwich segment in April 1938; Clarinda to Merle Jct. in December 1945; and Cleafield to Humeston, also in December 1945. The last and final segment of the H&S to disappear was the trackage between Merle Jct. and Clearfield, Iowa, which was abandoned in 1983.
Read more about this topic: Humeston And Shenandoah Railway
Famous quotes containing the word depression:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the grand-daughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said “On the line!” The Reconstruction said “Go!” I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)