The Forest City and Gettysburg Railroad was a small, short-lived railroad that ran between the South Dakota towns of Forest City and Gettysburg, a distance of 19 miles. The line was constructed in 1890, and in part transported agricultural products to Forest City for transshipment on Missouri River steamboats. Commercial traffic on the river was already in decline by that time, however, and the railroad was not financially successful; it was abandoned in 1911, one of the first rail lines in the state to be discontinued. The line was financially supported in part by the Chicago and North Western Railway, which connected with the line in Gettysburg.
Small segments of the former railroad grade remain visible today. The line's former western terminus at Forest City is now beneath the waters of Lake Oahe.
Famous quotes containing the words forest, city, gettysburg and/or railroad:
“The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water,—so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Here far from the city we make our roadside stand
And ask for some city money to feel in hand
To try if it will not make our being expand,
And give us the life of the moving-pictures’ promise
That the party in power is said to be keeping from us.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and silly. It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost gem-like perfection—the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“This I saw when waking late,
Going by at a railroad rate,
Looking through wreaths of engine smoke
Far into the lives of other folk.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)