The last scream of the Creeper

Railroads did not barrel into the Appalachians until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But when they did, communities lying in the path of the locomotives were dramatically transformed, and mountain people suddenly found themselves living in a new age of economic opportunity. Nearly overnight, mountain hamlets and enclaves became bustling little towns.

Twisting from Abingdon, Va., to Elkland, N.C., was the Virginia-Carolina Railway, nicknamed the “Virginia Creeper” for its slow crawl up steep mountain grades. Though its trains long ago came screeching to a halt, signs of the railroad’s arrival—and its absence—are enduring, lingering in old bridges, artifacts, and, for a little while longer, living memory.

“This train was unusual because very few trains were freight and passenger trains,” said John Ashburn, whose family roots in Todd date back to 1870.

{module Share this!|none}The Creeper departed Abingdon, Va., with freight to be delivered at stops along the line including hardware, shoes, clothing for department stores, dry goods, farm supplies, and other commodities. A baggage car would carry suitcases, bags of mail from the postmaster, and some freight as well.

“The conductor helped the passengers into the wooden coaches, the varnished interiors illuminated by the soft glow of the oil lamps that hung form the ceilings of the clerestory roofs,” writes author Doug McGuinn, who has penned several books about railroads in the region. “Rambunctious children, farm wives in cotton print dresses, and scruffy men in dirty bib overalls filed down the narrow aisles, along with the confident gentlemen in top hats, long-tailed coats, and stiff-collared shirts; and urbane ladies, who wore hoop skirts, lace blouses that covered slim arms and slender necks, high-laced shoes, and big hats decorated with ostrich feathers.”

The seats in the coach car were upholstered—with red plush, said one source—but often dirty, stained by the cinders of the steam engine’s coal furnace, remembered Eleanor Greer, 87, of the Green Cove community in Washington County, Va. That didn’t bother most folks. “We didn’t dress up back then; we just wore our regular old clothes. We didn’t have anything, and we weren’t going anywhere that we really had to dress up,” Greer recalled. She rode the train to see family members in Whitetop and Abingdon, and once to West Jefferson with her sister to have her tonsils taken out at the hospital. The train carried her husband home safely from World War II. “One day I looked out as the train came up, and I saw him standing up on the back of the last car,” she said.

Throwing Down the Tracks

Abingdon, a town in Washington County in southwestern Virginia, was already a stop along a railroad line from Lynchburg to Bristol in the 1880s, when developer John Imboden, a former Confederate general, set his sights on the small community of Mock’s Mill. He and others bought up land in anticipation of a new railroad coming from Abingdon to this soon-to-be-great-city in the Iron Mountains, where Imboden believed stores of iron ore lay waiting to be unearthed. The railroad would change hands and names a couple of times before becoming the Virginia-Carolina Railway Company under the control of W.E. Mingea. 

At the turn of the century, the first leg of the new railroad was complete. Abingdon became a thriving city, “a railroad center and junction point,” writes McGuinn. In 1911, according to McGuinn’s research, the Norfolk & Western Railway Company bought up 50 percent interest in the Virginia-Carolina, and the line extended to Creek Junction—near the Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina borders.

The difficult and dangerous labor of extending the railroad line through wild terrain continued, mostly at the hands of black men and immigrants, with white foremen, and dirt and rock transported by mules, remembered Charles King and Albert Cooper, two Ashe County, N.C., men whom Dr. Robert S. Jones interviewed in the 1970s. Shacks built along the New River housed the laborers as construction trudged onward toward Todd, located near the southern border of North Carolina’s most northwestern county. News of the coming railroad regularly occupied the Todd community column in the Watauga County newspaper, The Watauga Democrat.

“The Callahan Construction Co. which has just completed the grading of a section of the V.C.R.R. through the Beaver Creek country is erecting camps at J.C. Kirders, 1 1/4 miles below Todd…preparatory to beginning work on the section from McGuire to Todd,” stated the column in the July 2, 1914, edition. “Todd Mercantile Co. has built an addition to their already commodious store and have painted it, which gives it the appearance of a city store. McGuire Bros. & Co. our other merchants have also been repairing and painting their store and dwelling which adds much to its appearance.”

Dr. Jones’ chronicle of the railroad, a five-page typewritten account published in 1975 and titled “The Abingdon Branch: Recollections of the Early Days of a Railroad Era,” contains a number of remembrances from the old-timers of the day, including Mr. Clyde Ray, a resident of the Brownwood community who helped build the railroad. “He and his son who lives nearby, standing in the backyard of the Ray farm, pointed to the hillside where a few stumps remained,” wrote Jones. Giant white pines were cut from the hill and hauled away, recounted Mr. Ray’s son, and in their absence, “stumps stood like warts on the hillside”—stumps almost as big as a house, he said.

Cutting Trees, Growing Towns

With the 76.5 miles of standard gauge rail and 108 bridges, the train’s arrival in Todd brought change.

“Since the scream of the locomotive broke the silence of those peaceful surroundings a little more than three week ago, the modest little hamlet has taken on new life,” reads the June 24, 1915, edition of the “Locals from Todd” column in the Democrat.

“It brought a lot of prosperity to Todd. People had money in their pockets; it made some people quite well off. They could read books; they had time to get educated.

“We were bigger than Boone at that time.”

And with the change in conditions came a change in name. Todd was no more.

“The railroad gave it the name Elkland,” Ashburn said.

It seems it was common practice for the railroad or other developers to rename villages, towns, and communities as they pleased. Near Whitetop, Va., the Hassinger Lumber Company selected the locale of Azen for its new bandmill, renaming it Konnarock, historian T.H. Blevins wrote in “A Brief History of the ‘Virginia Creeper.’” A two-mile extension connected Konnarock to the main Virginia-Carolina line at the Creek Junction depot. Mock’s Mill would become Damascus, christened by Gen. Imboden after Damascus, Syria, which was “world famous centuries earlier for the superiority of its iron sword manufacturing,” noted Blevins.

As it would turn out, the “Iron Mountains” of Damascus, Va., would not yield any significant iron deposits after all, but that was no matter, because the mountains’ new riches would be found above ground.

“Although the mineral wealth Gen. Imboden dreamed of was never realized, the wealth of timber on the mountainsides was. The timber brought northern capital rushing in. Lumber companies, extract companies, and leather companies followed,” wrote McGuinn.

The Hassinger Lumber Company factored significantly in the operations of the Virginia-Carolina, which by 1919 had become part of the Norfolk & Western Railroad and was designated as the Abingdon Branch. The passenger and freight trains of the Abingdon Branch shared the track with the Hassinger log trains.

 “During [Hassinger’s] operation from 1906 to the day before Christmas 1928, the average daily capacity was 75,000 board feet with a one day maximum of 92,000 board feet of hemlock. Between 15 and 18 million board feet of lumber were created annually from roughly 30,000 acres of timber. This represents a total of 325 million board feet of lumber from a single mill, not counting the thousands of cords of pulp wood, tanning bark, mine props, crossties, and chestnut poles,” Blevins said. 

The company and its associated logging activities employed hundreds of workers, provided free electricity in Konnarock from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., hired the first doctors, and opened the first schools. Commerce flourished around every train stop, creating new towns.

The railroad’s decision to bypass Jefferson, the county seat of Ashe County, N.C., led to the establishment of West Jefferson. When the engine steamed into the fledgling town in 1914, “land offices, lumber companies, banks and other businesses that would be catering to the rail traffic had already started elbowing each other for space beside the tracks,” McGuinn noted.

In the community of Riverside (also known as Brownwood), an auction company advertised business and residential lots for sale on the front page of the June 24, 1915, Watauga Democrat, proclaiming in large type, “This is the most beautiful site for a city or town on V.C. Railroad. Riverside will be the shipping point for half the people in Watauga County. Get in on the ground floor and be the first one to make money out of real estate at Riverside.” A brass band was to perform at the auction.

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Train depots were community centers. The Green Cove station received passengers and freight from the train and operated a grocery store and post office. “The lady that lived in the community at the Green Cove depot—the men that worked on the train would usually call and let them know if they wanted her to pack them a lunch,” Greer said. Community members brought items to the train stations to trade, such as chickens, cattle, sheep, cheeses, animal pelts, ginseng, and minerals. Ashburn’s grandfather, John Cox, operated the Todd Mercantile. “He traded things like chestnuts, had a big bin for chestnuts, shipped the chestnuts out up north,” Ashburn said. “People in New England had a love affair with chestnuts. Around here we just fed them to the hogs.”

Riding the train was relatively affordable, and gave community members a chance to experience new things. Danford Phillips, 97, a native of Whitetop, which had no hair salon at the time, would board the train to get a permanent in a neighboring town. “It made two trips a day,” Phillips said. “That was our transportation back then.”

Boarding houses opened near each stop to host traveling passengers and businessmen. “For a quarter a night, you got a bed and a meal,” Ashburn says. “The old hotel didn’t have a lot of room. The thing about the hotel—and I always laughed at this—you sometimes had to sleep in bed with somebody you didn’t know. Some people didn’t take a bath that often.” Ashburn’s uncle, John Cox Jr., ran away on the train after being expelled from school, hoboing for years all across the country. “He left Todd on that train and went all over the United States,” Ashburn said. He was robbed in New York City; he worked on ranches out west. When a railroad detective was on patrol, he hid by riding under the bottom of the train. In the heat of Arizona and Texas, he sometimes rode atop the boxcars.

“He had a lot of adventures. He was a real character of a fellow,” Ashburn said.

Tracks, Trestles, Towns—Washed Away

Flooding of the New River remained a constant threat to the railroad line, and as the driving lumber industry continued to denude slopes of timber and other vegetation, the dangers only intensified. “By definition, ‘virgin timber’ does not last forever, and logging practices of the day seldom considered any future management of the once cut forest,” remarked Blevins.

In 1916—only a year or so after the line was completed to Elkland—a major flood caused extensive damage along the line, wiping out nearly all its tracks and bridges. But the railroad rebuilt. The next major deluge came in 1930, halting service for six months. By this time, the Hassinger Lumber Company had closed up shop at its Konnarock mill, lumber shipments were on the decline, and the Great Depression had a callous grip on the nation’s economy. The Interstate Commerce Commission authorized the abandonment of the section of track between Elkland and West Jefferson in 1933, and the train made its final trip to Elkland in April of that year. The railroad removed the tracks, and the railroad bed became a road. “When the train left in 1933, Todd left with it,” said Ashburn. “We never were the same.”

Then came the devastation of the 1940 flood. Heavy, unrelenting rains from a hurricane swept through the naked hillsides of the southern Appalachians. “They say for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction,” Ashburn said. “When that flood came, there was nothing to hold the soil in place, because all the lumber was gone. There was nothing to hold the rain back. It washed away two-thirds of the buildings here in Todd. The same thing that the railroad brought in here—it all washed away in the flood.”

It was news of the flood, in fact, that finally called John Cox Jr. home to North Carolina. “He picked up a paper in Idaho and saw a headline that said Todd was under water,” Ashburn said. “He was afraid that his daddy and mother were in trouble.” The former hobo went back to high school, graduated, joined the Marines and eventually became a successful schoolteacher and principal.

In the 1970s, when Jones published his historical account of the Virginia Creeper, service continued from West Jefferson to Abingdon, but only once a week, on Thursdays. “At nearby Jefferson, the county seat of Ashe, hearings are being held during the fall of 1975 before the Interstate Commerce Commission to request discontinuance of service by the Abingdon Branch altogether. The Norfolk and Western Railway can no longer profit from operation of the line, but many will be saddened at this passing of a railroad era,” he wrote.

The Creeper’s whistle, known for its chilling, eerie quality, sounded for the last time in 1977, and the tracks were removed that year. “I can’t describe it,” Greer remembered. “It was a whistle that we got so used to, when it all quit, we really missed it. In recent years, at a Green Cove community festival, a man brought a whistle that replicated the sound of the Creeper train, she said: “It made you want to cry. It sounded just like it.”

The George L. Carter Railroad Museum

The George L. Carter Railroad Museum is devoted to the region’s railroad history and features several large layouts of towns and landscapes with running model trains as well as railroad-related items of historical and cultural interest. The museum focuses on three railroads that crisscrossed the area: the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina (“Tweetsie”) the Southern (now Norfolk Southern), and Clinchfield (now CSX). 

George L. Carter built the Clinchfield Railroad through 275 miles of mountain terrain to carry coal from Eastern Kentucky. In 1909, when a state committee visited the area while searching for a site for a proposed teachers college, Carter offered his 120-acre farm and $100,000 toward the establishment of the school, which became ETSU.

Fred Alsop, a biology professor and president of the local Mountain Empire Model Railroaders, serves as the director of the railroad museum. He joined the club about 15 years ago.

“I’ve always had an interest in trains,” he said. “I enjoy building the layouts and the scenery—that’s the thing I enjoy.”

The Carter Railroad Museum’s three permanent model railway layouts include a G (large) scale layout, a 44-feet-by-24-feet HO scale (medium size) layout created by members of the railroad club, and a 23-feet-by-12-feet N (small) scale layout donated by Ms. Marian Bankus of Knoxville. The railroad club has worked at its HO layout for years, and it remains a perpetual work in progress.

“Some folks say model railroads are never finished,” said Alsop. “Every member had a part of it.” The club is currently at work on a fourth layout—a 1,300-square-foot replica of the Tweetsie Railroad line. Using archival photos and oral histories as a reference, the club strives to make the layouts as historically accurate as possible. “The Tweetsie layout has nine sections under development that are each approximately 20 feet long. In order to have sufficient funds for the completion of the layout, the Carter RR Museum is seeking sponsors for each of these nine sections,” Alsop wrote in the January 2013 newsletter of the Railroaders club.

Also featured at the museum are artifacts and memorabilia from the railroad, including lanterns and hardware, photographs, and a library with about 900 volumes on railroads. Some displays are changed on a regular basis, and a regional railroad is highlighted once a month. A Little Engineer’s Room is provided for children, with wooden train toys and other activities. Some families come every Saturday, Alsop noted.

Some visitors to the museum share their own memories of the area’s railroads. Students in ETSU’s graduate storytelling program conduct interviews to capture oral histories for the museum’s collection. “We try to get contact information for a lot of them that have good stories—we follow up on those,” Alsop said.

Rail excursions

Great Smoky Mountains Railroad

With 53 miles of track, two tunnels and 25 bridges, the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad explores the river gorges and valleys of Western North Carolina’s mountains. The Railroad offers a variety of scenic, round-trip excursions departing from Bryson City. Trips range from 3 ½ hours to a full day.

The Nantahala Gorge Excursion travels 44 miles to the Nantahala Gorge and back again, across the Little Tennessee and Nantahala Rivers and Fontana Lake into the Nantahala Gorge. 

The Tuckasegee River Excursion travels 32-mile roundtrip along the Tuckasegee River through old railroad towns and scenic meadows. Specialty excursions are available throughout the year. 

gsmr.com or 800.872.4681.

The Secret City Scenic Excursion

Return to the heyday of passenger railroading with the Southern Appalachia Railway Museum’s Secret City Scenic Excursion Train in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Trains depart from the Heritage Center, an historic Department of Energy facility where research and development plunged the United States into the Atomic Age. The train winds along Poplar Creek and Highway 327 in the beautiful hills and valleys of East Tennessee.

Each round trip travels approximately 14 miles and lasts about one hour. Vintage 1950s Alco diesel locomotives pull the trains. Seating is in an air-conditioned coach and a dining car, both restored from the 1940’s era of passenger railroading.

The train usually runs on the first and third Saturday of each month from April-September. In February, March, November, and December, the train will run on Saturdays and Sundays of selected weekends, usually around holidays.  

Ticket prices are $19 for adults and $15 for children 12 and under. Note that due to federal Department of Energy regulations, non-U.S. citizens are required to provide passport and visa information prior to boarding the train, and citizens of certain nations are not permitted to ride per federal embargo. 

southernappalachia.railway.museum or 865.241.2140.

Three Rivers Rambler

The Three Rivers Rambler remains a working line, hauling freight during the week and offering passenger excursions on special weekends. 

Beginning the journey in Downtown Knoxville, the Rambler travels past historical sites to the “Three Rivers Trestle” where the French Broad and Holston Rivers join to form the Tennessee River. The 11-mile route includes beautiful farmland, Knoxville’s first settlement area, and several quarries that were mined to build our nation’s Capital.

threeriversrambler.com or 865.524.9411.