Asheville Citizen-Times from Asheville, North Carolina • Page 84

AO ASHEVILLE CITIZEN-TIMES Ashevllle, N. C. MountoinVocotionlond SundoyyJune 27, 1965 Railroad Came To fie Highlands To Speed Major Tree Harvesting MMHUilHMMIIIIMIMMM 11 i ments, wore accustomed to handling tremendous quantities of logs. Such quantities could only be moved to the mill by rail and in steep country it was the logging loco-motive that could both pull the grades and move long strings of log loaded cars. West Virginia logging experience was to pay dividends in our area.

Early on the scene was Louis Carr who had both railroad and logging experience. He purchased the timber cutting rights on Van-derbilt's 100,000 acre Pisgah Forest, set up his large mill on the railroad near Pisgah, and headed his ribbon of steel into the hill country, He planned to sub-contract the cutting and hauling of trees and pay local people a fixed sum for each tree delivered to his railroad. He himself would operate the railroad and the mill. These plans made, he was ready to begin a major operation. He would extend his rail line into an area, cut and remove the timber, then take up the rail line and relay it into a new area ready for cutting.

Carr used standard gauge No logging problems was more difficult than the moving of heavy sections of timber to the mill. America's first trained forester, i i turned first to streams, hoping to float logs to the mill and thus save the cost of road construction. Small streams, even supplemented by water reservoirs behind splash dams, could not drive logs down the narrow, tortuous channels of the Blue Ridge area. Pinchot's dream faded. Then Doctor Schenck came on the scene, inbued with enthusiasm for roads.

Roads could be used to transport logs and also provide a travel mite for fire fighters. Roads could be used as fire lanes a place to fight and stop the devouring flames. His ideas were sound as far as they went. But now a new factor entered the picture. Major tree harvesting was just being completed In West Virginia, and large firms, seeking new areas to cut.

turned their eyes toward Western North Carolina. These mills, with large crews and heavy invest nil THESE TRAINS CLIMBED steep grades alternately moving forward and in reverse. Arrows indicate climbing route; reverse arrows to indicate route of descent. railroad and 50 ton Climax locomotives. Often he rode these trains and sometimes, In exhuberance, he would nonchalantly stand on his head on a car of logs hurtling down the track and take cover.

The heavy rumbling of the cars and the high pitched whine of wheels on the rail were further warnings. The runaway usually culminated in a thunderous splintering crash as locomotive, cars, and logs piled up in a huge jumble. In most cases trainmen jumped to safety but occasionally a man trying to brake the train waited too long and suffered or serious injury. Long ago the operation ended but vestiges of it remain. Hiking through the woods one finds sections of railroad grades and log cribwork piers of old bridges are still in place.

When the line crossed soft, wet ground heavy logs were laid as a base and the ties were spiked to them. Some of these big logs are still in place just as the crews left them when they moved the rail lines to a new, uncut, cove. In some cases forest roads follow the right-of-way and occasionally in the dust one finds a spike dropped by a workman long ago. In one case U. S.

Highway 276 follows the railroad grade, curving around Looking Glass Falls, so that today we ride quickly and smoothly over scenic areas where long ago cars of logs jostled and bumped on their way down to the mill. It was the logging railroads that kept logs flowing to the mill, providing full time employment for men felling and bucking trees on the mountains and for the mill crews below. Thus while the trains were colorful, they were also essential and even vital to the lumber industry. Today powerful trucks and good roads have replaced most of these rail lines but one has continued operations down the present day the line owned and operated by the Bemis Hardwood Lumber Company. The Bemis Company, last of the N.

C. logging railroad operators, is modernizing its operation, and has found that the railroad will no longer be needed for transportation. John B. Veach, conscious that this is the last operating logging railroad in the mountains, was anxious that this line be preserved and operated so that visitors to Western North Carolina could see logging methods and equipment used in the steep country. He offered the right-of-way, track and equipment to Government Services Incorporated, and an arrangement has been consummated under 1 ch that agency will continue operation of North Carolina's last logging railroad.

Thus a page of early industrial history will be preserved for Americans and doubtless it will prove a colorful and interesting history lesson. PRESENT-DAY LOGGING in Nantahala National Forest. There's Timelessness About Gorge the steep, curved right-of-way! Steady and spectacular were most of the railroad operations, Jigging trains did the work of innumerable teams over ground where teams could have operated only with difficulty, if at all. While most railroad operations were never routine, on occasion the locomotives were pressed into unusual service. In 1918 loggers and their families were residing in rail cars in the Pink Beds.

The dread influenza epidemic of 1918 gripped the countryside. Even in town the services of a doctor were hard to obtain. In remote areas access to medical attention was virtually impossible. CaiT, keenly concerned about the welfare of his workers and their families, got a doctor to promise a night call to the Pink Beds. Logging trains worked by day but on that night the headlight of Climax Number Two lighted up the right of-way as it puffed by Looking Glass Falls and into the Pink Beds with doctor and medicine for the stricken community.

It was a ray of light and a ray of hope, and across the years this act has been remembered by those rendered such special service by Carr with his locomotive! Rail lines ran beside streams and gradually inched their way upgrade until very steep slopes were reached. Then the track was laid to run back and forth across the hillsides like huge "Ws" lying on their sides. The trains alternately backed and went forward to ascend grades or to go downhill. Logging trains did not operate without incidents colorful ones. Sometimes cars heavily loaded with logs got detached from a train; sometimes brakes refused to hold on steep grades.

In either case danger rode the rails and the repeated short blasts from the shrill locomotive whistle signalled ahead for all to clear falls leaps out In a billowing bunting of spray and foam to enter the gorge. The wall o( the lower falls is gray, wat tied rock, sitting weathered with the dark, passed cen-' turies. The falls originated downstream near what is presently Lake James during tha Dinosaur Age, according to geologists. Gradually the falls cut upstream while the river carved the beginning of the canyon. Ultimately the river cut as deeply as it could through the quartzite mountains a rock more durable than the hard gneisses and schists that compose most of the Appalachian highlands then commenced to widen out.

1 Subsequently mountainj uplifted and once more the stream cut downward, creat- ing a canyon within a canyon. Facing downstream from the falls, the gorge is formed by the great stretch of Linville Mountain on the right, and Jonas Ridge, Table Rock and Hawksbill on the left. In the night there is the grate, grind and growl of the big rowdy ditch. The ceaseless rhythms of nature, pulsing since before recorded time, will hold their cadence into untold and unimagined ages to come. Standing at any point along the vast rim, a viewer is immediately struck by the stark, untamed beauty.

The next impression is the immensity of the canyon carved out of rock over lost eons by the running, cutting river. And over the virgin woodlands of the Linville Gorge lays a brooding timelessness. Mankind may suffer its ebbs and flows and changing tid-als, but here the rhythms of nature repeat themselves in endless cadence. And the code was laid down those countless eons ago: survival of the fittest for the animals, the fowl, the fish, the plant life, the forest and the numerous tribes of poisonous snakes. From the Linville Falls, the gorge twists and turns in tortuous convolutions for 12 miles "to the easy roll of the Catawba valley hills.

In those 12 miles, the wild river drops almost 2,000 feet. Like many National Park Service areas, the falls and gorges were acquired through the philanthropy of John D. Rockefeller Jr. Americans also owe much to a mountain family who owned the vast acreage before the government became interested. It belonged to the Hnssfield family, ardent conservationists who- refused to let so much as a brush be cut in the days when lumbermen were despoiling vast tracts and boundaries of mountain forest.

In the forest the trees are of but few varieties. This is explaimcd by the dominant species theory. Only the strong types lived. Through years of competition the trees best adapted to the area have won out and excluded all others, resulting in a "climax forest." The Carolina hemlocks are of the largest in existence, as are the sourwoods, though the latter seldom grow to heights of more than 40 feet and have to lean toward tha sunny spots beneath the bigger trees. The falls and gorge won their name out of an old tragedy.

In 1766 a hunter named William Linville, in company with his son and another youth, came to the area to hunt. Indians fell upon them and savagely took the lives of the two Linvilles. The other youth escaped to tell the tale. The present day trail system leads first to a view of the upper falls, a relatively broad but shallow drop which occurs just before the lower used in the Pink Beds. CLIMAX LOGGING Locomotive, of the type the Carr Lumber Company YOU'LL ENJOY MAGGIE VALLEY, NORTH CAROLINA It's an enchanting vocation region, with much to tee and much to do.

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