Sunset Cluster


Book Description

Discover the Sunset Cluster—railroads that were doomed to fail? The first two decades of the 20th century were the twilight of the Railroad Age. Major routes had long been established, and local service became the focus of new construction. Beginning in 1907, a cluster of five shortline railroads were established in otherwise unconnected parts of Iowa. They, however, would short lived. The five Iowa 'sunset cluster' railroads might appear to deserve eternal obscurity, being at best minor footnotes to American railroad history. After all, their total mileage barely exceeded 100 miles. Their average life span, moreover, covered about five years, and the Des Moines & Red Oak Railway (DM&RO) never turned a wheel. Yet, these Iowa shortlines had an immediate positive impact to their service area, but disappointingly they became victims of modal competition and the Good Roads Movement. Using contemporary newspapers, government reports, and other little-known sources, renowned railway historian H. Roger Grant offers a fascinating look at these shortline railroads. Sunset Cluster explores the almost desperate desire by communities to benefit from steel rails before the regional railroad map finally imploded and the challenges faced by latter-day shortline builders.




Annual Report of the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service of the United States


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Excerpt from Annual Report of the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service of the United States: For the Fiscal Year 1922 Bubonic plague is perha s the most widespread of all diseases of a pestilential character in t e world, except smallpox. In the early part of the present fiscal year this disease threatened to become epidemic in the southern part of the United States, particularly in cities of the Gulf coast, but prompt and radical measures applied to local conditions in Galveston, Beaumont, and Pensacola, where the disease had gained a foothold, and the continuation of the measures already in force in New Orleans, served to avert its spread. Yellow fever foci were reported during the year in widely scattered areas on both the eastern and western coasts of Mexico, the eastern coast of Central America, and certain portions of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America. In spite of close and active com mercial relations with infected ports, and the occurrence of five cases of this disease on ships arriving at domestic ports situated in infectible territory, the disease was successfully excluded from our country. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.






















General Catalogue of Printed Books


Book Description