The Last Train from Elkland

Book excerpt: Not only is THE LAST TRAIN FROM ELKLAND a brief history of four northwestern North Carolina mountain communities, it is also about two railroads that operated in and around these communities: the Virginia¿Carolina, also known as the ¿Virginia Creeper¿ (in 1916, the Virginia¿Carolina Railway was bought by the Norfolk & Western Railway, and renamed the Abingdon Branch), and the Deep Gap Tie and Lumber Company¿s railroad, whose former Hassinger Lumber Company¿s Shay logging locomotive operated alongside Gap Creek, from Deep Gap, in Watauga County, North Carolina, to the South Fork of the New River, near Fleetwood, in Ashe County, North Carolina, a distance of only about five miles. Although these communities were located in North Carolina, they all had a common tie-in with the neighboring state of Virginia ¿ the trains of the two railroads hauled logs that had been felled in the area surrounding the four communities, timber destined to be cut at the Hassinger Lumber Company¿s sawmill in Konnarock, Virginia. By the time the blades went silent on Christmas Eve, 1928, almost 400 million board feet of the area¿s best hardwood had passed through the Hassinger Lumber Company¿s sawmill. How much did this unchecked logging contribute to the immense damage done to the area by the disastrous floods of 1916 and 1940? This question is also explored in this book.