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Conquering the Appalachians by Mary Bogart Dust Jacket 2000 WM Clinchfield
Conquering the Appalachians by Mary Bogart
Hard cover with Dust Jacket
Copyright 2000
206 Pages
Chronicling the construction of the Western Maryland Railway and the Clinchfield Railroad over, around and through the Appalachian Mountains.
Contents
Chapter Description Page
Table of Contents iii Dedication
Foreword vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1 Little Houses on Wheels, 7
Biography of William Cary Hattan
2 Western Maryland, Cumberland Extension. 13
A short history of of the Western Maryland with notes from Hattan's journal
3 Railroad Fever, 27
Early history of the Clinchfield Railroad from 1827-1915.
4 The Clinchfield Line, 43
Some interesting facts about the construction of the Clinchfield
5 The "Loops", 55
The spiral curve over the Blue Ridge with technical drawing designed by W. C. Hattan
6 Camp Life on the Mountain, 75
Life at Altapass, N. C. on top of the Blue Ridge.
7 Broad River Viaduct, 111
Notes from Hattan's journal
8 Connellsville Extension on Western Maryland, 123
Last extension on WM over the top of the Alleghanies
9 Connellsville Extension, Work Detail, 135
from Hattan's Journals
The death of my father when I was only twelve left an unfilled void in my life that had a great influence on my adult life. I grew up in the small railroad town of Erwin, Tennessee in the heart of the Appalachians, the hub of the Clinchfield Railroad. My father, William Cary Hattan, was Chief Engineer of the Railroad at the time of his death in 1929. My mother was from Meyersdale, a similar town in western Pennsylvania, in the heart of the Alleghenies. Meyersdale was the center of two important railroads, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Western Maryland. Consequently, the Western Maryland and the Clinchfield played an important part in our family's lives.
I did not know how important until thirty-seven years later when I returned to my family home in Erwin. During the process of going through my family's belongings after the death of my mother in 1966, I ran across an old trunk in the attic which contained the basis for the stories and photos contained in this book.
In it were the daily journals of my father's engineering work dated from 1899 to 1918. Over two hundred photos in practically mint condition on the construction of the tunnels and bridges of the Clinchfield and WM Rys. were buried in the contents of the trunk. I knew I had found an historical treasure, but I didn't know what to do with it.
Sometime in the summer of 1980, Dr. Richard M. Kesner, Director of the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University, heard about the discovery of the journals and pictures and was anxious to see them. The University had just received the Clinchfield Railroad collection to add to their archives and he was interested to see what I might have to add to it. After looking at them, he suggested that I write a history of the railroad from the information I had.
The time never seemed right to do this until recently. My father has been dead over seventy years, and I hesitated to write a personal history of a man who is practically unknown to anyone today. But because he contributed an important part to the building of these two short but extraordinary railroads, I feel his story should be told and these remarkable photos preserved.
My father's contribution to the Clinchfield consisted of the unique construction of the "Loops" section in the heretofore impassable barrier of the Blue Ridge near Altapass, North Carolina. In 1905, he was Resident Engineer of the Fifth Division overseeing the building of seventeen tunnels in a spiral curve 4.4 miles long. From there he moved to the Seventh Division in charge of the building of the Broad River Viaduct, 1360 ft., the longest span on the road.
Later, in 1912, my father returned to the Clinch-field as Division Engineer of the Elkhorn Extension, a section thirty-five miles long from Dante, Virginia to Elkhorn, Kentucky, consisting of thirty tunnels and eight bridges. This section of the road followed the Big Sandy River through the awesome canyon known as the "Breaks" where the Big Sandy joins the Russell Fork at the base of the Towers, a sixteen hundred ft. high arch. On this extension was the Sandy Ridge Tunnel, 7854 ft., tenth longest tunnel in the U.S.
The Connellsville Extension on the Western Maryland RR was one of the last and most challenging major mainline railroads to be built in the eastern United States. In 1910, my father accepted the position of Division Engineer of this Extension, where the challenge again was from the west end of the Cumberland Narrows to the summit of the Alleghenies at Deal, PA, an elevation of 2374 ft. Here, the Big Savage Tunnel 3294 ft in length pierced the mountain. Four more tunnels, several bridges and two large viaducts, the Keystone and Salisbury, were constructed.
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