There was far more to Nestle’s decision to not build a plant in McCloud than meets the eye.
To greatly (over) simplify it, Nestle’ proposed to have access to a pretty much unlimited supply of water, and would pay the equivalent of a tiny fraction of a cent per gallon. Should the municipal water supply run low, Nestle’ would have priority over the town.

Over time, the original talk of creating 100 to 200 new jobs was being whittled down to 20 or 30. Understand that most of these plants are almost entirely automated. It’s my understanding that Nestle’ never had any intention of shipping by rail, so its effect on the McCloud Railroad was nonexistent. Jeff Forbis had proposed the idea of specially built cars for handling the Nestle’ product, but again, Nestle’ wasn’t interested.

True, the original proposal was met with a lot skepticism and distrust. Rest assured that the town wasn’t uniformly against the water plant. Feelings pro and con split the town to some degree. Even families were divided.

Would construction of the Nestle’ plant have saved the railroad? Highly unlikely. The final long decline of the railroad began when traffic over the line to Lookout ended. After that, there simply wasn’t enough revenue generated to cover the costs of operating and maintaining 65 miles of mountain railroad. There is no one person or persons to blame. To do so is a disservice to those who kept to McCloud Railroad operational as long as they did.

sda