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RAILROADS - General
Railroads "In 1876 the first railroad triumphantly scaled the Blue Ridge, coming up from Spartanburg, South Carolina, ascending at the south of Tryon Mountain by way of the Pacolet Valley.  But this feat so exhausted its resources that it was ten years before it got from Hendersonville to Asheville.  Meantime, the State of North Carolina in 1881 built a railroad that, approaching the mountains from Salisbury by way of Morgantown, followed the course of the first turnpike past Old Fort, surmounted the troublesome Blue Ridge in a series of curves and spirals and windings that was a feat of engineering, finally tunneling through the mountain and continuing down the Swannanoa Valley to Biltmore, where turning westward, it went on to Asheville, whence in 1882, the line was complete to Paint Rock. The town now grew so rapidly that, in 1887, it proudly boasted of eight thousand inhabitants, and of having become one of the leading resorts of the South, thousands of tourists coming there from nearly every state and territory in the Union, while banks, hotels, clubs, schools, and churches appeared as by magic..." (Morley, Margaret, The Carolina Mountains, 1913,  pp. 131-132)

"The railroads that have triumphantly surmounted the Blue Ridge and taken the mountains, as it were by storm, make it easy in these days to get within reach of the formerly almost inaccessible places.  Besides those that have crossed the mountains, and the short line up the French Broad Valley to the 'Sapphire Country', there is the 'Murphy Branch' that connects Asheville with Atlanta, Georgia by a circuitous route down the very centre of the plateau around and over obstructing mountains."  (Morley, Margaret, The Carolina Mountains, 1913, p. 232)

"The railroad does very well in some places, but imagine a locomotive smoking and puffing and screaming up that romantic valley of the Cullasagee where log houses and spinning wheels consoled the eye in former days!  And imagine it bringing up a smart station among the flaming azaleas of the Highlands."  (Morley, Margaret, The Carolina Mountains, 1913, p. 258)

"Up the French Broad Valley as far as Toxaway comes that branch of the railroad from Hendersonville, so it will be seen that Highlands now lies between the terminals of two railroads, the joining of which one fears is only a matter of time." (Morley, Margaret, The Carolina Mountains, 1913 p. 263)

"Ledger was as remote as any place in the mountains when one first went there, but now the new railroad, that has performed the feat of crossing the mountains by ascending the wild Toe Valley and descending the Blue Ridge, has a station on the river a few miles from Ledger." (Morley, Margaret, The Carolina Mountains, 1913 p. 326)

 
Southern Railroad "Since then, like a cosmic spider, the Southern Railroad has woven its meshes below the Carolina mountains on either side, and thrown its steel threads across them in several places, while now yet another line is being surveyed across the Blue Ridge to the north of Tryon Mountain, up the Broad River Valley, past Chimney Rock, and on as far as Bat Cave where it follows a devious route of escape by way of the Pigeon River Gorge.  The Blue Ridge that looks so ethereal in the distance presents almost insuperable obstacles to the civil engineer as do also the guarding ramparts of the valleys of the plateau but the great transcontinental line, that is to reach from the Atlantic coast of North Carolina to Seattle on the Pacific, will doubtless find a way."  (Morley, Margaret, The Carolina Mountains, 1913,  p.380)