Immigration for business purposes is just starting. The mineral deposits and the lumber stores are bringing in good citizens from abroad. With abundant resources, both of material and power, there is a wide field here for manufacturers. The native population has not husbanded the capital needed to start the ball rolling. Although settled for 100 years, Western North Carolina is a new country in many respects, but the day of its rapid development is near at hand.
The great obstacle to development in the past has been the section’s isolated position, an obstacle now almost removed. The building of a turnpike from South Carolina to Tennessee was justly regarded a great public improvement when it was completed in 1827, but during the last half century horses have been too slow to carry on the world’s work. General Hayne, of South Carolina, was one of the first projectors of a railroad through the mountains. It was to run from Charleston to Cincinnati, a line which there is good reason for believing will be pushed to completion at no distant day. The original project was given chartered form in 1835.
The Western North Carolina road was also an early project, and is a part of the system of public improvements contemplated by the state government. A charter was granted in 1855. The state authorized the issue of bonds for three-fourths of the stock, the remaining one-fourth being subscribed by private individuals. R. C. Pearson was chosen president, and J. C. Turner engineer. It was the latter gentleman who first surveyed a route over the Blue Ridge via Swannanoa gap. The construction of this road reached to within five miles of Morganton, when the war opened and all operations were stopped. After the war, under the successive administrations as president of A. M. Powell, S. M. D. Tate, and Major J. W. Wilson, work was continued. The latter gentleman, combining the office of engineer with that of president, took the first locomotive around the coils and through the tunnels into the Swannanoa valley. The road was sold and passed under its present management, which is associated with the Richmond & Danville company, in the spring of 1880. It has been completed to its junction with the E. T. V. & G. R. R., and is being pushed over and through the massive transverse chains of the plateau to its western terminus. The scenery along its lines is spoken of at various places in the following pages. The Blue Ridge has been crossed by the Spartanburg & Asheville railroad, and there is good ground for hope that the Carolina Central will be extended from Shelby to Asheville at an early day. All these enterprises are necessarily expensive, and consequently show the confidence which capitalists place in the future of the region whose resources will be opened up.
On account of the secluded position of Western North Carolina, there is little to be said under the head of military reminiscences. The mountain men, in the War of 1812, shouldered their rifles and marched to distant climes, in defense of their country’s honor.
During the late struggle, this section escaped the desolation which the greater portion of the South suffered. Stoneman’s Federal cavalry made a raid, after the “surrender” of Lee into the trans-Blue Ridge country. He passed by Hendersonville and Asheville, whence a Confederate fort had been erected. Dividing into small squads, his men pillaged the country as they went west.
A dare-devil expedition was accomplished by the Federal raider Kirk, who, with his company of 325 East Tennesseeans, crossed the mountains, through Mitchell county into Burke, surprised a larger force of Confederates, and succeeded in capturing all their stores and taking the men prisoners of war.
The mountain men were divided in sentiment and action during the war. Most of the property holders joined the Confederate forces, while the poorer classes refused to volunteer, and, when conscripted into the service, deserted at the first opportunity. There were exceptions, of course, with respect to both classes—some of the larger freeholders being Union men, and some of the poor people in the coves being enthusiastically loyal to the state.
The Southern Alleghanies, though “the oldest in the world,” have not yet settled down to a state of absolute rest. Shocks and noises in several localities have frequently been felt and heard, much to the discomfort of inhabitants of the vicinity. There are reminiscences in the northern part of Haywood county of shocks as early as 1812, and from time to time ever since. The restless mountain is in a spur of the New Found range, near the head of Fine’s creek. General Clingman was the first to call public attention to it, which he did in an elaborate paper in 1848. There are cracks in the solid granite of which the ridge is composed, and towards its foot, chasms four feet wide, extending at places in all directions, like the radiating cracks made in a rock by a light blast of gunpowder. There are evidences of trees having been thrown violently down, and a trustworthy gentleman declares that a huge oak was split from root to top by the opening of a chasm under it. General Clingman says:
“I observed a large poplar tree which had been split through its center so as to leave one-half of it standing 30 or 40 feet high. The crack or opening under it was not an inch wide, but could be traced for hundreds of yards, making it evident that there had been an opening wide enough to split the tree, and that then the sides of the chasm had returned to their original position without having split so as to prevent the contact of broken rocks.”
A great mass of granite was broken into fragments, and after one of these shocks every loose stone and piece of wood was moved from its original place. These jars, accompanied with noise, used to occur at intervals of two or three years, but none have been felt for some time.