This was my last visit to the branch before it was abandoned north of Walport in 1986. College City was (and still is) a strange place, I got the feeling I was on a military base without all the security. It has three 1 mile-long runways that you could pretty much drive right up to. I've see some really big jets parked there. The entrance to the Frisco yard was at the Miller Rd xing on the SW edge of the base. At this time there was still a fair amount of business here, these were the only freight cars I saw on the entire branch in all my visits to the Pocahontas Branch. The ROW from this crossing to Hoxie was donated to the County in 2006 & is now the Hoxie-Walport Trail.
After leaving College City I headed north on HWY67, at Shannon I took a left onto Tenco Rd, crossed the tracks and headed north on Old Country Road which paralleled the west side of the tracks. At first glance the branch looked to be in pretty good shape but after following it a while the reality started to set in. Old rusty stick rail, rotten ties, barely enough ballast to keep the weeds down, I realized they hadn't run a train up here in years. At a place called Culver the road crossed the tracks from west to east, I thought that was a good place to take a couple of photos.
My last stop was Pocahontas before heading to Jonesboro to scout the Lake City Branch. Took a photo of the depot and checked out the tracks on the short spur behind it. Must not have too impressive because the only photo I took was of the weed covered bridge that gave the spur access to the factory on the other side. And of course I was still trying to get back to where the branch actually ended, no luck again, the fence was locked. That concludes my trips to Pocahontas Branch, a couple of years later it would be abandoned, the tracks & bridge removed. By the time I returned in mid-1990s the spur behind the depot ran had been buried by a new HWY 67 & the rest of the area bulldozed down for a riverside park. Today folks sitting in the benches looking out at the Black River on hot summer evenings wonder why there are concrete piers in the middle of the river...The End
