Essex County 📍

The Chicago-based rail company that owns a controversial rail line in the central Adirondacks that the state is seeking to have declared “abandoned” has consented to the abandonment, records show.

The New York State Attorney General’s Office submitted a letter to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board on Friday indicating that Saratoga & North Creek Railway had consented to abandonment of and interim trail use on the so-called “Tahawus” rail line between North Creek and the hamlet of Tahawus in Newcomb.

It only took them 75 years to condemn and tear down Franklin Roosevelt's illegal railroad. Roosevelt claimed that it was necessary for the war effort, but one has to think it was more a way to give the middle finger to the preservationists and Tammany Hall, more generally.

Roosevelt wasn't a fan of the Forest Preserve concept to put it lightly. And he spent millions to sue the state into submission, appealing it all the way to the Supreme Court, when they could have built a railroad that was only about 10 miles out of the way and avoided forest preserve.