Siding 7

Cast for the state centennial in 1989, the bronze ends on Edgemont remaining a thriving railroad town. That same year, two miles south, the Tennessee Valley Authority finished sealing about 4.5 million tons of uranium mill tailings, contaminated soil and wreckage in an engineered cell. A mill on the east side of town had processed Black Hills uranium from 1956 to 1972, and its tailings had been blown and hauled onto properties in town, which federal and state crews later cleaned. Siding 7 itself lay three-quarters of a mile north.

What the plaque says

Siding 7 In early 1890, the Burlington Railroad established Siding 7 three- quarters of a mile up the tracks north from here. The siding consisted of four short, fan-shaped tracks and a hand-operated turntable over an open pit used for servicing the engines. There was also a small machine shop. The railroad planned to use this installation as a permanent location for their yards and as a terminal, since it was near the junction of the main rail line to the coal fields of Wyoming and the branch line into the Black Hills. After two attempts to secure additional adjacent property needed for expansion failed, the Burlington purchased land from a home- steader, Hank Carsley, on the south side of the Cheyenne River and constructed what was to become a permanent terminal -- thus Edgemont, "edge of the mountains," was born the summer of 1890, growing into and remaining a thriving railroad town. Erected 1989 by the Edgemont State Centennial Committee, the Burlington Northern Railroad, the South Dakota State Historical Society, and the State Department of Transportation as a South Dakota Centennial legacy.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Mammoth Site — 19 mi
  A housing lot in Hot Springs where a bulldozer turned up a tusk in 1974 and the developer gave up the subdivision for sixty-one mammoths.
• Wind Cave National Park — 24 mi
  A cave that breathes through a hole the size of a dinner plate, lined with nearly all the boxwork known on Earth, under a prairie restocked with bison shipped from New York.

More markers nearby

• Cheyenne River Crossing, 1876-1877 Cheyenne to Deadwood Stage Trail — steps away
• Camp Collier — 3.1 mi
• Wood Stage Station — 13 mi
• John Stevenson Robertson: Pioneer Horticulturalist — 15 mi