with Paris, Texas, the railway was constructed parallel to the Kiamichi River from Talihina to Kellond, a small settlement three miles north of Antlers, Oklahoma. With the train came the telegraph and later the telephone. The coming of the Frisco stimulated settlement in the Choctaw Nation by European Americans and European immigrants. Population centers formed around each of the railroad's station stops, stimulated by trade and new markets. The river was important as a source of fresh, plentiful water for the trains, several of which ran daily. The frequent Frisco service encouraged developers to come for resource extraction. Timber companies and individual loggers soon moved in. Over the next several decades, they cleared the old-growth forest in the Kiamichi Mountains. Forestry remains the area's chief industry. Numerous rail spurs were developed from the Frisco outward along the creek valleys stretching away from the river. Large saw mill operations became common in the valleys for processing the lumber. During World War II, a training flight conducted by Britain's Royal Air Force—flying from a base in Texas—went awry in poor weather and two planes crashed. One crashed into the south slope of White Rock Mountain above Moyers, Oklahoma, and another crashed on Big Mountain between Moyers and Kosoma. Two fliers lost their lives in the latter crash. In 2000 school children from Rattan, Oklahoma erected the AT6 Monument in their honor on Big Mountain. Also during World War II, the U.S. Navy honored the river with the launch of the USS Kiamichi, hull number AOG-73, built by St. Johns River Shipbuilding in Jacksonville, Florida. She launched on August 17, 1945, three days after the surrender of Japan. Because of the end of the war, completion of the ship was canceled on August 29. A Klickitat-class gasoline tanker, she was later completed for International Tankers of Panama. The ship was renamed Transmere in 1951 and in 1952 was sold to Colombia; it was renamed Sancho Jimeno. On October 29, 1961, President John F. Kennedy visited Big Cedar, east of Talihina, Oklahoma to give a speech marking the opening of U.S. Route 259. In August 1975 the Kiamichi River made national news when its bottomlands were the scene of a days-long hunt for two elephants that had escaped from a circus in Hugo, Oklahoma. They were found at Hugo Lake. Recreation Fishing and hunting are common along the river, as is boating. American Whitewater,