628 



NORTH CAROLINA. 



other third would be between seventeen and 

 thirty-four miles from it, and the remaining 

 third' between thirty-four and fifty. The first 

 project was to afford transportation to all the 

 people, as above described, by a main central 

 line, after which the general anatomy of the 

 State system was to be constructed, the arms, 

 branches, lateral and cross lines, necessary to 

 make a complete system of transportation for 

 all sections and all the interests of the State. 

 It was never contemplated by any intelligent 

 advocate of internal improvements to confine 

 the State to a single line of railroad, or to deny 

 to any portion of the people the largest and 

 most liberal facilities for reaching all the mar- 

 kets of the world. It was the hope that long 

 before this every portion of North Carolina 

 should be penetrated by railroads tending in 

 every conceivable direction; that with one 

 general system through the center of the State 

 from east to west, connecting the mountains 

 with the seaboard, there should also exist a 

 perfect network of railroads all over the State, 

 developing its resources, and making the peo- 

 ple prosperous and the State a great common- 

 wealth. That portion of the Western North 

 Carolina Railroad known as the Mountain Sec- 

 tion is ten miles long, and extends from a point 

 half way between Old Fort and Henry Station, 

 to the Swannanoa Gap, and through the long 

 tunnel under the Blue Ridge. Throughout the 

 United States, or North America, there is no- 

 where such inland work as that presented on 

 this mountain section, and, as a North Carolina 

 achievement of engineering and mechanical 

 skill, this work is a monument and an object 

 of becoming pride to the State. There are on 

 this section seven tunnels, in all 3,636 feet in 

 length, which involved 40,000 cubic yards of 

 excavation through solid rock. These tunnels 

 are now all completed and ready for the track 

 through them, except the Swannanoa, which 

 has yet 80 feet of heading and 300 feet of 

 bench to be removed, in all something less 

 than 3,000 cubic yards, not more than six 

 weeks' work for the present force of hands, 

 and the appliances upon it. This heavy tunnel- 

 work has long stood as an almost impenetrable 

 barrier to railroad connection between the east 

 and the west, and for a period of twenty years 

 the work of boring through these mountains 

 has been watched by the people on both sides 

 of the Ridge. There are, among numerous 

 smaller ones, five main cuts, out of which have 

 been taken, in the aggregate, 465,000 cubic 

 yards of earth and stone, mostly rock, one of 

 these cuts measuring 160,000 cubic yards, and 

 the other four averaging above 75,000 cubic 

 yards. Besides the succession of cuts and fills 

 on the entire mountain section, there are four 

 main fills of 682,000 cubic yards, one of them 

 requiring 380,000 cubic yards of earth and 

 stone to make it, and the other three aver- 

 aging more than 100,000 cubic yards. On four 

 of these fills temporary trestles were erected, 

 the track carried on over them, and the pro- 



cess of completing the filling will go on from 

 time to time, until the roadway is made per- 

 manent. The most of the work of filling in is, 

 however, already completed, only leaving the 

 temporary structures of such spans and height 

 as make them perfectly safe for the passage 

 of trains for two or three years, before which 

 time they will all have been filled, and the 

 track resting on a solid road-bed of earth and 

 broken stone. The tunnel- work, cuts and fills, 

 above enumerated, by no means comprises the 

 excavation on the mountain section. For the 

 entire ten miles the roadway is a succession 

 of cuts and fills, and there is not a yard of the 

 distance over which the track rests on a natu- 

 ral level. The total rise on this mountain sec- 

 tion is 1,020 feet, or 102 feet to the mile. The 

 original estimates for the work on this section 

 were $1,300,000, or an average of $130,000 

 to the mile. With the aid of convict labor it 

 has not cost so much, but with hired labor it 

 could not have been completed within the es- 

 timates. There are numerous ravines and 

 mountain streams which the road crosses, and 

 one, Mill Creek, is crossed twelve times in six 

 miles. Besides the culverts, there are eight 

 stone viaducts, and three wooden bridges or 

 trestles. The four temporary trestles to be 

 filled in aggregate 1,200 feet in length, and 

 have a height at their centers of 26, 56, 64, 

 and 70 feet, respectively. Three arch culverts 

 are respectively 402, 288, and 2 CO feet long, 

 8 by 10 feet, width and height, and the main 

 one cost $15,000 at contract price in 1868. 

 Twenty -five smaller cuts, other than those enu- 

 merated above, involved the excavation of 

 nearly 400,000 cubic yards of earth and stone, 

 and the work has been increased by reason of 

 land-slides fully one third of the total amount 

 of the estimates for the mountain section at 

 the beginning. Including the remainder of the 

 Swannanoa Tunnel, there is not now in the 

 way of the track to the summit, at Swannanoa 

 Gap, more than 5,000 cubic yards of excavat- 

 ing, and of this there is not a shovelful of 

 original earth outside of the long tunnel, all 

 of that which remains in the reading now 

 being the deposit of the slides ; and should no 

 more occur, the roadway will be open to the 

 Swannanoa Tunnel at once. 



The eleven counties of Buncombe, Cherokee, 

 Clay, Graham, Hay wood, Henderson, Jackson, 

 Macon, Madison, Swain, and Transylvania, 

 whose future is bound up in the extension of 

 the Western North Carolina Railroad to Duck- 

 town and to Point Rock, return for taxation 

 2.818,986 acres of land, assessed at $4,630,465, 

 which is, on account of the want of transpor- 

 tation facilities, less than $2 per acre. The 

 internal wealth of that magnificent country 

 can not be estimated. There are no means of 

 approximating its resources. It requires rail- 

 roads to give it the facilities for reaching mar- 

 ket, to stimulate its people to increase the agri- 

 cultural and mineral products, and to attract 

 capital and population, to properly develop that 



