Traveling across the treacherous and diverse landscape of western North Carolina is a challenge historically met with human ingenuity. Mountain traces of Native Americans, dusty stagecoach routes and vital railroads lined the region. Asheville installed the state's first electric streetcars. Intrepid young men and women continued North Carolina's aviation legacy. The Buncombe Turnpike helped tame the Blue Ridge Mountains, allowing livestock drives to reach markets in South Carolina. Author Terry Ruscin reveals the visionaries and risk-takers who paved the way to the "Land of the Sky" in a wondrous examination of western North Carolina transportation history.

Since the opening of the first permanent railway in 1833, hundreds of railroad companies have operated in North Carolina. Rail transportation, faster and more efficient than other methods of the era, opened new markets for the products of North Carolina's farms, factories, and mines. Over the years, North Carolina rail companies have ranged in size from well-engineered giants like the Southern Railway to temporary logging railroads like the Hemlock. Cross ties and rails were laid across almost every conceivable terrain: tidal marshes, sand hills, rolling piedmont, and mountain grades. Vulnerable to the turbulent and unregulated economies of the day, few railroad companies escaped reorganizations and receiverships during their corporate lives, often leaving tangled and contradictory histories in their passing.

In this work, the most comprehensive of its kind, the author examines in engaging narrative and wonderful photography the development of the area’s complete railroading industry—Class 1 railroads, short lines, industrial and mining roads, and logging lines. Added to the textual histories are more than three hundred photographs and illustrations, including timetables and maps for most of the lines discussed.

This paperback book traces the development of the state agency responsible for North Carolina's highways from its beginnings in 1915 as the North Carolina State Highway Commission through the first years of the twenty-first century. One chapter is devoted to other forms of transportation, such as the state's ferry, bicycle, and rail programs. The author identifies many of the leaders, both political and professional, who helped to create North Carolina's entire transportation network.

North Carolina Railroad, 1849-1871, and the Modernization of North Carolina

Examines state-funded transportation improvements from the early years of the nineteenth century to the start of the Civil War. Individual chapters are devoted to roads, bridges, inland navigation, canals, inlets, railroads, and steam navigation. This book is available in an eBook edition under the title Transportation in Antebellum North Carolina.