Wild River Railroad
In 1891 a railroad was built following the present Route 113 from Gilead to Hastings lumber mill on Evans Brook near its confluence with the Wild River. A row of ten houses built along the Wild River for company employees at Hastings became known as "the ten commandments". Rails extended ten miles (16 kilometers) up the Wild River from Hastings by 1896 with branch lines up tributaries Bull Brook, Blue Brook, Moriah Brook, Cypress Brook, and Spruce Brook. A 1903 wildfire destroyed the unharvested timber in the watershed. The railroad was dismantled in 1904. The lumber company land was purchased for the White Mountain National Forest between 1912 and 1918. Passage of the New England Wilderness Act in December, 2006, designated 23,700 acres (96 km2) of the watershed as the Wild River Wilderness.
Read more about this topic: Wild River (Androscoggin River)
Famous quotes containing the words wild, river and/or railroad:
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—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“I cannot tell how many times we had to walk on account of falls or rapids. We were expecting all the while that the river would take a final leap and get to smooth water, but there was no improvement this forenoon.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“People who make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)