Virginia Creeper Trail

The Virginia Creeper Trail is the railroad that became a ride — thirty-four miles of trail from Abingdon to the North Carolina line, on the roadbed of the line locals called the Creeper because it climbed the mountains so slowly. The grade dates to the 1880s iron speculation: the Abingdon Coal and Iron Railroad was chartered to haul ore that never came, and state prisoners — African-American convict laborers — cut the right-of-way from Damascus to Abingdon. Some died building it and were buried in unmarked graves beside the rails.

The railroad that finally ran was the Virginia-Carolina, backed by Norfolk & Western, which reached Damascus in February 1900 and eventually climbed to Whitetop and Elkland — seventy-seven miles of seven-percent grades and 108 bridges, hauling the Hassinger brothers' lumber out of the mountains and passengers into communities that had never had rail. The line ran until 1977, when floods finished what economics started; the towns of Abingdon and Damascus bought the bed and turned it into one of the most famous rail-trails in the country.

The file keeps the Creeper: the convict labor under the roadbed, the timber trains on the trestles, and the rails-to-trails conversion that made a dead railroad into Virginia's best-known ride.

The Virginia Creeper is the archive's rail-trail file — the iron speculation, the convict-cut grade, and the Creeper that became a trail.