Forest City and Gettysburg Railroad

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:

    It is as when a migrating army of mice girdles a forest of pines. The chopper fells trees from the same motive that the mouse gnaws them,—to get his living. You tell me that he has a more interesting family than the mouse. That is as it happens.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The City is of Night; perchance of Death,
    But certainly of Night; for never there
    Can come the lucid morning’s fragrant breath
    After the dewy dawning’s cold grey air;
    James Thomson (1834–1882)

    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)

    ... 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)