History
The Apache Railway was incorporated on September 5, 1917. Grading for the APA began on October 1 and by March 1918 the rails were being laid. One year later, on September 6, 1918, the track reached Snowflake. The railroad continued building south from Snowflake and reached McNary on April 5, 1919. Construction of the entire 72-mile (116 km) line from Holbrook to McNary was completed on July 1, 1920, and the APA was listed as a class II railroad common carrier.
From October 1, 1931, until 1936, amid the great depression, the APA was placed in receivership.
The White Mountain Scenic Railroad operated steam powered passenger excursions over the Southwest Forest Industries-owned line from McNary to the logging camp of Maverick, AZ, beginning in 1964. As track conditions deteriorated the excursions were cut back in later years to a point about half way to Maverick. In the final years it operated north from Pinetop Lakes to a place called Bell on US Route 60. In 1976 the White Mountain Scenic Railroad ceased operations and moved its equipment to Heber City, UT to be used on an excursion there known as the Heber Creeper. The line from Maverick to McNary, with some elevations exceeding 9,000 feet (2,700 m), was removed in 1982 after the McNary sawmill closed.
By the 1980s the APA was Arizona's only remaining logging railroad. The track from Snowflake to McNary was abandoned in 1982.
Read more about this topic: Apache Railway
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)