Steamtown, U.S.A.

Steamtown, U.S.A., was a steam locomotive museum that ran steam excursions out of North Walpole, New Hampshire, and Bellows Falls, Vermont, from 1963 to 1983.

The museum was founded by millionaire seafood industrialist F. Nelson Blount, then operated after his 1967 death by the non-profit Steamtown Foundation. Vermont's air-quality regulations limited steam excursions, visitor attendance declined, and disputes arose over the use of track. In the mid-1980s, some pieces of the collection were auctioned off and the rest moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Steamtown continued to operate but failed to attract the expected 200,000–400,000 visitors. Within two years, the tourist attraction was facing bankruptcy, and more pieces of the collection were sold to pay off debt.

In 1986, the United States House of Representatives, at the urging of Pennsylvania Representative Joseph M. McDade, approved $8 million to study the collection and to begin to make it a National Historic Site. The National Park Service (NPS) conducted historical research on the foundation’s equipment, producing a Scope of Collections Statement for the Steamtown National Historic Site, published in 1991 under the title Steamtown Special History Study. The report contained concise histories of each piece of equipment and made recommendations as to whether each piece belonged in the soon-to-be government-funded collection.

By 1995, Steamtown had been acquired and developed by the NPS with a $66 million allocation. Several more pieces have since been removed from the collection.