Maggie Valley question

ekburger · **Joined:** Sun Aug 22, 2004 5:58 pm **Posts:** 8

I saw the thread concerning the Maggie Valley Railroad. My wife and I visited this railroad on our honeymoon in the mid 60's. I just recently converted my 35mm film strips into files. If I can I will send a couple of photos.

whodom · **Posted:** Fri Sep 08, 2006 6:26 am

Doug,

The Rebel Railroad (later "Goldrush Junction" and now Dollywood) was in Gatlinburg, TN.

I went there as a kid one summer and met the young actor (Jon Provost) that played "Timmy" on the Lassie TV show.

And Dave thought mention of Herb would have to be explained....

robertjohndavis · **Joined:** Mon Aug 23, 2004 8:10 am **Posts:** 2499

It is interesting that Ashville's rise as an art community coincides with it's growing heritage railroad. There must be some connection in the tourist mind between trains and arts. Consider the art/music hubs large and small that boast tourist trains - Austin, New Hope, Jim Thorpe, Nashville, Branson...

Perhpas artists gravitate towards nice places (which is true of the towns mentioned) with similar features that attract vacationers? Or maybe railroad attractions appeal to a similar type of person as American art and roots music?

Rob

PS: the one thing Herb and I shared was lust for Bailey Quarters!

PPS: don't overlook the music scene in the area between Ashville and Charlottesville, VA. Lots of great bands in those hollers. Current fave are The Hackensaw Boys.

johnacraft · **Joined:** Thu Aug 26, 2004 2:53 pm **Posts:** 660

Rob, I don't think you can credit the success of the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad with the changes in WNC. If anything, it's the other way round. (And GSMR is to Asheville what NH&I is to Philly, not New Hope - Dillsboro is about an hour from Asheville.)

In 1946, the journey from Atlanta to Asheville consumed an entire day. On the Southern, you left Terminal Station at 9am, cooled your heels in Spartanburg for two hours, and stepped off in Asheville at 7pm. Getting there by road wasn't much faster.

In the 1970s, the North Carolina side of the Smokies was terra incognito compared to Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and environs. Cherokee was, if it is possible, even more trite than Gatlinburg, and there was the occasional tourist outpost on the road from Asheville (Ghost Town), but Bryson City held nothing for the tourist (I recall we had trouble even finding a restaurant there when we made an aborted attempt to visit Fontana dam).

I made my last visit to the "Murphy Branch" before Southern/NS sold it in 1985 (the weekend of Live Aid). I remember starting the day in Erwin, working my way to Marion shooting the Clinchfield, then the Old Fort loops, then the Murphy branch. Old US 70 in the Loops was finally barricaded (it was driveable in 1981), both US 19 and US 23 were still twisting two-lane roads, being widened in places. From Murphy (a run-down sawmill town), GA 5 was a slow local road with traffic lights in every little town, but still the fastest way into the Atlanta suburbs.

Rafting was just in its infancy on the Nantahala and the Ocoee then.

Today, I can drive from my home in Atlanta to Asheville in 3 hours flat. I can go up I-575 (formerly GA 5) to Murphy (which is unrecognizeable from that 1985 trip), or up I-985 (paralleling the Southern) to Cornelia, thence (paralleling the Tallulah Falls Ry.) to Franklin and over the mountain to Dillsboro. US19 and 23 are fast 4-lane roads for most of their length.

The closing of the copper smelter in McCaysville / Copperhill was a big plus (trees started growing again), but it was access (roads), not GSMR, that made the land valuable.

As to the question "Why do artists like Asheville?", it ain't railroads. Richard Florida's "The Rise of the Creative Class" is the seminal work on the subject. It's an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the American workforce, especially why high-value workers tend to "cluster" where they do.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/featur ... orida.html

http://www.creativeclass.org/

Quote:

The creative class people I study use the word "diversity" a lot, but not to press any political hot buttons. Diversity is simply something they value in all its manifestations. This is spoken of so often, and so matter-of-factly, that I take it to be a fundamental marker of creative class values. Creative-minded people enjoy a mix of influences. They want to hear different kinds of music and try different kinds of food. They want to meet and socialize with people unlike themselves, trade views and spar over issues.

As with employers, visible diversity serves as a signal that a community embraces the open meritocratic values of the creative age. The people I talked to also desired nightlife with a wide mix of options. The most highly valued options were experiential ones---interesting music venues, neighborhood art galleries, performance spaces, and theaters. A vibrant, varied nightlife was viewed by many as another signal that a city "gets it," even by those who infrequently partake in nightlife. More than anything, the creative class craves real experiences in the real world.

They favor active, participatory recreation over passive, institutionalized forms. They prefer indigenous street-level culture---a teeming blend of cafes, sidewalk musicians, and small galleries and bistros, where it is hard to draw the line between performers and spectators. They crave stimulation, not escape. They want to pack their time full of dense, high-quality, multidimensional experiences. Seldom has one of my subjects expressed a desire to get away from it all. They want to get into it all, and do it with eyes wide open.

Creative class people value active outdoor recreation very highly. They are drawn to places and communities where many outdoor activities are prevalent---both because they enjoy these activities and because their presence is seen as a signal that the place is amenable to the broader creative lifestyle. The creative-class people in my studies are into a variety of active sports, from traditional ones like bicycling, jogging, and kayaking to newer, more extreme ones, like trail running and snowboarding.

It was Asheville's proximity to rafting, mountain hiking, etc., that attracted the artists - once the roads were up to snuff.

Finally, and most importantly: Herb was after Jennifer, not Bailey ;)

JAC

Erik Ledbetter · **Posted:** Fri Sep 08, 2006 8:55 am

Dougvv wrote:

Was this the former Rebel Railroad site? Was Dollywood the former Rebel RR?

Yes, Dollywood is the Rebel Railroad (famous to me for being the butt of Ron Ziel's scorn in Twilight of the Steam Locomotives, which thorougly warped my impressionable young mind). The Dollywood Web site actually has a very nice history:

http://www.dollywood.com/company-info/about.aspx

johnacraft · **Joined:** Thu Aug 26, 2004 2:53 pm **Posts:** 660

Erik Ledbetter wrote:

Yes, Dollywood is the Rebel Railroad (famous to me for being the butt of Ron Ziel's scorn in Twilight of the Steam Locomotives, which thorougly warped my impressionable young mind). The Dollywood Web site actually has a very nice history:

Based on everything I've seen, and with due respect to the Robbins family, Ron's scorn wasn't misplaced. The Robbins empire was typical of the "bright paint SELLS!!!!!" era of tourism. But this paragraph deserves highlighting:

Quote:

Upon acquiring Goldrush in 1977, the Herschend Brothers contributed more than a million dollars in improvements on the way to opening Silver Dollar City, Tennessee in Pigeon Forge. Intent upon showcasing the craftsmanship of the Smoky Mountain region, guests entered near the park's train trestle, passed under the train tracks and entered Craftsman's Valley. The area was filled with talented artisans including blacksmiths, wood carvers, leather smiths and lye soap makers who showcased their crafts while demonstrating their trades. The park experienced significant growth over the next decade of operation including the addition of rides, shops, more craftsmen, shows and attractions like the Silver Dollar Grist Mill which was completed in 1983 and became the first working grist mill built in Tennessee in more than 100 years. The Herschend Brothers never compromised their commitment to the preservation of the Great Smoky Mountains' heritage and traditions.

If you visited the Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge area in the 1970s, you got a preview of Tourist Purgatory. Endless traffic jams, execrable souvenir shops selling rubber tomahawks, corn-cob pipes and "hillbilly hats." The only thing missing was the Cherokee Chief you could have your picture taken with - he was over the mountain in NC.

Silver Dollar City was quite different, and the above paragraph captures it well. The demonstrations weren't hillbilly caricatures like every other clip joint - you could see wooden shingles being made with a froe and wooden mallet, a blacksmith working iron . . . while it was definitely a tourist attraction, it managed to capture a bit of the spirit of Cades Cove, over the mountain in the National Park.

I haven't been in the area since 1981, so I don't know if it's gotten better or worse (I have my suspicions). But Silver Dollar City, at least in its early years, presaged "heritage tourism" by 20 years.

JAC

G. W. Laepple · **Joined:** Mon Aug 23, 2004 5:10 pm **Posts:** 1182

The man with his hand on the brake valve of no. 192 is the estimable Ted Burdette, locomotive engineer and mechanic extraordinare. Ted worked on the Elk River Coal & Lumber's Lilly Fork in West Virginia, spent some time at Cass in the shop and then wound up at Dollywood. He helped me out when I was running the Graham County RR v. 3 in the early 1980s. This man knows a whole lot about Shays and logging railroads. Last I heard, he's still enjoying life in Sevierville, Tenn.

Mike Stillwell · **Posted:** Fri Sep 08, 2006 12:57 pm

Dollywood has gotten a lot better. We were there last month. The 192 is the main running engine. She looks sharp with what we would call normal service paint and no funky smoke stack. Tender lettering was in a long, small font, akin to the "Pere Marquette" as seen on Michigan's own. I think it was #71's tender, while 192's is refurbished (was outside the shop stripped). I rode in the cab, which was a blast. The beast is slippery as he**, but that could have been attributed to a number of factors (early in the day - full tank of water which splashed on the rails, etc). All in all a very professional RR.
The good news was that 71, was just down for normal maintenance and that they had been given the OK by management to buy the tubes for #70. Boiler needed some minor stuff, but is in great shape. So look for another long time cold engine to be hot again in the next few years. The bad news was that the frame and 1 driver set from #72 was junked, so that engine is really gone now, but some would say that was the case when it lost it's boiler. Some parts do remain of the loco on site.
What bad could you say about a little park RR with 3 big narrow gauge steamers on their active or soon to be active roster?

Later - Mike Stillwell

BTW - There was also a Std gauge consol parked out by the main drag. Hard to spot the first few times we drove by. Looked fairly complete, but I never got too close to it. I want to say it hails from NC, but I don't have my David J. book with me.

Gary Gray · **Posted:** Fri Sep 08, 2006 1:27 pm

Mike, The 2-8-0 is ex-Smoky Mountain 107, formerly Southern 107, originally built 1888 as East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia 419. While I'm sure she saw service in a good bit of the southeast during her SR years, she started and ended her service career on Tennessee railroads.

jimwrinn · **Posted:** Fri Sep 08, 2006 4:49 pm

Dillsboro and Bryson City look nothing like how they did before the railroad started in 1988. I have a shot in 1979 of the Murphy Branch passing the lighted Christmas tree at the oil company. Everything else was residential housing. Bryson City: All a dying town.

Both are quite thriving now due to tourism, and the center of it is the railroad.

Jim

gmray · **Joined:** Sun Aug 22, 2004 9:34 am **Posts:** 382

I made a drive up to Maggie Valley over the 4th of July weekend. I decided to go the "old" way up US 19. Yes, once you get north of Bryson City, it is still the same twisting, turning road John remembers. The Warrior Inn and other motor hotels (now known as motels) are still in business in Cherokee. The tourist traps still line both sides of the roads in downtown Cherokee, including the "Chief" wearing the ridiculus head dress. Santa's Land is still in business, too.

I don't remember a railroad at Ghost Town except for the incline.

The entrance to Goldrush Junction once required a drive between two steam locomotives. One of them had the first steam locomotive cab I ever climbed into. All the pipes on the backhead really amazed me. I believe one of them is the #29 now on display at the Chattanooga Choo Choo. My best memory of Goldrush Junction was shooting back at the train robbers with my provided rifle. The "sheriff" even gave me a spent cartridge from his pistol for my bravery. I still have it.

Gary Gray · **Posted:** Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:48 pm

Mark, I had the experience of both shooting robbers at "Gold Rush Junction", and, a couple of years earlier, shooting the "Evil Wicked Yankees" at "Rebel RR". I think that this maybe one of the root causes of me now being a Civil War reenactor. (Although I am now frequently an "Evil Wicked Yankee", my unit goes both ways....., the other influence may have been seeing the "General" under steam as a 1st grader) I wonder how many of us got our first rememberable taste of live steam at either "Tweetsie" or Pigeon Forge, and then "graduated" to the Southern/NS Steam Program.

whodom · **Posted:** Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:13 am

This is sort of OT, but if any of you happen to be in the area, there's an excellent musuem in Maggie Valley called "Wheels Through Time". The main focus is pre-WWII American motorcycles, but there are a few autos as well. There's even a railroad connection as one of the displays features a home-brewed Harley Davidson powered minining locomotive.

The displays are all extremely well-done and the experience feels much more like getting out of a time machine and stepping back into the 1930's than it does visiting a "museum". For instance, one of the displays is a fully equipped ~1930's Harley repair shop, complete with hundreds of boxes of OEM parts, tools, a couple of bikes under repair, work benches, etc. A very interesting aspect of the museum is that many of the motorcycles run and are ridden fairly regularly.

I'd imagine some RR museum operators could get some good ideas from this place.

Read more here: http://www.wheelsthroughtime.com/

John Bohon · **Joined:** Sun Aug 29, 2004 1:04 pm **Posts:** 625

John,

Thanks for showing us the photos of Ted Burdette. Do you have more? I would be interested in any other photos you may have. If you prefer use my email address, jhbohon@yahoo.com, to answer.

Thanks.

John Bohon

johnacraft · **Joined:** Thu Aug 26, 2004 2:53 pm **Posts:** 660

Wayne, thanks.

John, that's the only photo I have of Ted. I can't say I remember too much about him - I was 16, that might have been my first cab ride (though certainly not my first time in the cab), and the fireman was much more talkative than the engineer.

The date of the photo of Ted, by the way, is August 14, 1979. The photo of 192 was taken August 18, 1980.

Here's a photo of the fireman, again in August 1979.

JAC