The Crouch Line: The Crooked Little Railroad Up Rapid Canyon
Of all the railroads that ever ran out of Rapid City, none was remembered with quite the affection reserved for the little line that climbed Rapid Canyon. It was slow, it was crooked beyond reason, and it never made anyone rich. People who rode it tended to forgive it everything, because few railroads anywhere ran through country so beautiful, and few took their time about it quite so thoroughly.
The line grew out of the same logic that brought the main railroad to Rapid City in the first place. Once the town was connected to the outside world, the obvious next move was to push a line into the Hills themselves, toward the timber and the mines of the interior. The natural avenue was Rapid Canyon, the gorge that Rapid Creek had cut on its way down out of the high country. A railroad following the creek could reach the lumber and ore of the central Hills, and so, late in the nineteenth century, builders set about laying a narrow grade up the canyon toward the camp at Mystic and the timber country beyond.
The crookedest railroad in the Hills
The canyon did not give the railroad an easy time. To follow the creek and hold a gentle enough grade for the small locomotives of the day, the line had to bend constantly, doubling back on itself, hugging the rock, and crossing and recrossing the water again and again. The result was a route famous for its curves and for the great number of bridges packed into a relatively short distance. The trains crept along it at a pace that horrified people accustomed to mainline speeds and delighted everyone who had come for the scenery.
The line picked up the name of one of the men most associated with its building and operation, and as the Crouch Line it entered local legend. Its reputation rested less on its commercial importance, which was always modest, than on the experience of riding it. Passengers passed through some of the prettiest country in the Hills, with the creek tumbling beside the track, the pines crowding the slopes, and the rock walls rising close on either hand. The slow pace, so frustrating to a freight shipper, was a gift to a sightseer.
Hard freight and a thin living
For all its charm, the Crouch Line was a working railroad first, and the work was hard. It hauled timber down out of the Hills, served the mining and milling activity along its route, and carried the mail and the people of the canyon settlements. But a winding mountain short line is an expensive thing to build and maintain, and a thin one to operate. Floods in the canyon could tear out grade and bridges that had cost dearly to put in, and the traffic was never heavy enough to make the line truly prosperous. It got by, which on a railroad of that kind was an achievement in itself.
The line also carried a fair number of excursion riders, people from Rapid City and visitors to the Hills who rode up the canyon simply for the pleasure of it. In an era before the automobile put the scenery within easy reach of anyone with a car, a slow train through a beautiful gorge was a genuine attraction, and the Crouch Line drew its share of pleasure traffic.
The end of the canyon line
What finished the Crouch Line was, in the end, the same thing that finished so many small railroads. The automobile and the improved road made the slow little train less and less necessary, the timber and mining traffic that had justified the grade dwindled, and the cost of keeping a flood-prone canyon railroad in repair grew harder to justify against shrinking revenue. The line was abandoned, its rails pulled up, its bridges left to rot or removed, and the canyon returned to a quieter state.
The grade did not entirely vanish. Like many old rail routes in the Hills, parts of the right-of-way found new life as a path for hikers and riders once the trains were gone, the easy gradient that the railroad had worked so hard to achieve serving a different kind of traveler. The Crouch Line itself survives mostly in photographs, in the memories handed down by people who rode it, and in the affection that a region keeps for the crooked little railroad that took its time up the canyon and showed everyone aboard the best of the Hills.