Big Stone Gap! It does not sound very big. What is it? At a certain point of this continuation of Cumberland Mountain, called Stone Mountain, the main fork of Powell's River has in the course of ages worn itself a way down to a practical railroad pass at water-level, thus opening connection between the coking coal on the north and the iron ores on the south of the mountain. No pass that I have ever seen—except those made by the Doe River in the Cranberry region of North Carolina—has its wild, enrapturing loveliness; towering above on each side are the mountain walls, ancient and gray and rudely disordered; at every coign of vantage in these, grasping their precipitous buttresses as the claw of a great eagle might grasp the uttermost brow of a cliff, enormous trees above trees, and amid the trees a green lace-work of undergrowth. Below, in a narrow, winding channel piled high with bowlders, with jutting rocks and sluice-like fissures—below and against these the river hurls itself, foaming, roaring, whirling, a long cascade of white or lucent water. This is Big Stone Gap, and the valley into which the river pours its full strong current is the site of the town. A lofty valley it is, having an elevation of 1600 feet above the sea, with mountains girdling it that rise to the height of 4000—a valley the surface of which gently rolls and slopes towards [305] these encircling bases with constant relief to the eye, and spacious enough, with those opening into it, to hold a city of the population of New York.
This mountain pass, lying in the heart of this reserved wilderness of timbers, coals, and ores, has always had its slender thread of local history. It was from a time immemorial a buffalo and Indian trail, leading to the head-waters of the Cumberland and Kentucky rivers; during the Civil War it played its part in certain local military exploits and personal adventures of a quixotian flavor; and of old the rich farmers of Lee County used to drive their cattle through it to fatten on the pea-vine and blue-grass growing thick on the neighboring mountain tops. But in the last twenty-five years—that quarter of the century which has developed in the United States an ever-growing need of iron and steel, of hard-woods, and of all varieties of coal; a period which has seen one after another of the reserve timber regions of the country thinned and exhausted—during the past twenty-five years attention has been turned more and more towards the forests and the coal-fields in the region occupied by the south Alleghany Mountain system.
It was not enough to know that at Big Stone Gap there is a water-gap admitting the passage of a railway on each side at water-level, and connecting contiguous workable coals with ores; not enough repeatedly to test the abundance, variety, and purity [306] of both of these; not enough to know that a short distance off a single vertical section of coal-measure rocks has a thickness above drainage level of 2500 feet, the thickest in the entire Appalachian coalfield from Pennsylvania to Alabama; not enough that from this point, by available railroad to the Bessemer steel ores in the Cranberry district of North Carolina, it is the shortest distance in the known world separating such coke and such ores; not enough that there are here superabundant limestone and water, the south fork of Powell's River winding about the valley, a full, bold current, and a few miles from the town the head-waters of this same river having a fall of 700 feet; not enough that near by is a rich agricultural region to supply needed markets, and that the valley itself has a natural drainage, delightful climate, and ideal beauty—all this was not enough. It had to be known that the great water-gap through the mountain at this point, by virtue of its position and by virtue of its relation to other passes and valleys leading to it, necessitated, sooner or later, a concentration here of railroad lines for the gathering, the development, and the distribution of its resources.
From every imaginable point of view a place like this is subject to unsparing test before it is finally fixed upon as a town site and enters upon a process of development. Nothing would better illustrate the tremendous power with which the new South, hand [307] in hand with a new North, works with brains and capital and science. A few years ago this place was seventy miles from the nearest railroad. That road has since been built to it from the south; a second is approaching it from a distance of a hundred and twenty miles on the west; a third from the east; and when the last two come together this point will be on a great east and west trunk line, connecting the Ohio and Mississippi valleys with the Atlantic seaboard. Moreover, the Legislature of Kentucky has just passed an act incorporating the Inter-State Tunnel Railroad Company, and empowering it to build an inter-State double-track highway from the head-waters of the Cumberland and Kentucky rivers to Big Stone Gap, tunnelling both the Black and Cumberland Mountains, and affording a passway north and south for the several railways of eastern Kentucky already heading towards this point. The plan embraces two double-track toll tunnels, with double-track approaches between and on each side of the tunnel, to be owned and controlled by a stock company which shall allow all railroads to pass on the payment of toll. If this enterprise, involving the cost of over two million dollars, is carried out, the railroad problem at Big Stone Gap, and with it the problem of developing the mineral wealth of southwest Virginia and south-east Kentucky, would seem to be practically solved.
That so many railroads should be approaching [308] this point from so many different directions seems to lift it at once to a position of extraordinary importance.
But it is only a few months since the nearest one reached there; and, since little could be done towards development otherwise, at Big Stone Gap one sees the process of town-making at an earlier stage than at Middlesborough. Still, there are under construction water-works, from the pure mountain river, at an elevation of 400 feet, six miles from town, that will supply daily 2,500,000 gallons of water; two iron-furnaces of a hundred tons daily capacity; an electric-light plant, starting with fifty street arc lights, and 750 incandescent burners for residences, and a colossal hotel of 300 rooms. These may be taken as evidences of the vast scale on which development is to be carried forward, to say nothing of a steam street railway, belt line, lumber and brick and finishing plants, union depot, and a coke plant modelled after that at Connellsville. And on the whole it may be said that already over a million dollars' worth of real estate has been sold, and that eight land, coal, and iron development companies have centred here the development of properties aggregating millions in value.
It is a peculiarity of these industrial towns thus being founded in one of the most beautiful mountain regions of the land that they shall not merely be industrial towns. They aim at becoming cities [309] [310] [311] or homes for the best of people; fresh centres to which shall be brought the newest elements of civilization from the North and South; retreats for jaded pleasure-seekers; asylums for invalids. And therefore they are laid out for amenities and beauty as well as industry—with an eye to using the exquisite mountain flora and park-like forests, the natural boulevards along their watercourses, and the natural roadways to vistas of enchanting mountain scenery. What is to be done at Middlesborough will not be forgotten. At Big Stone Gap, in furtherance of this idea, there has been formed a Mountain Park Association, which has bought some three thousand acres of summit land a few miles from the town, with the idea of making it a game preserve and shooting park, adorned with a rambling club-house in the Swiss style of architecture. In this preserve is High Knob, perhaps the highest mountain in the Alleghany range, being over four thousand feet above sea-level, the broad summit of which is carpeted with blue-grass and white clover in the midst of magnificent forest growth. [312]
KENTUCKY RIVER FROM HIGH BRIDGE.