Virginia Creeper Trail Club Meeting

I attended an excellent presentation last night. The VCT Club in conjuction with the O. Winston Link (no relation that I know of but I'm looking for one) Museum of Roanoke presented "From Steam Locomotives to Mountain Bikes: A Cultural History of the Virginia Creeper Trai". The Powerpoint presentation was shown in the auditorium at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon. It was well attended, having been announced both as a regular club meeting as well as part of an arts series (can't recall the name) that I think was connected to the Wm. King Arts Museum, also in Abingdon. But I digress.

The presentation was a presentation of the history of the trail's development and illustrated by beautiful photographs taken by O. Winston Link from 1955-1960. I'm going to make a trip to the museum in Roanoke at the earliest opportunity. His photos will also be featured in a permanent gallery at the King museum following a renovation. Here's some of what I noted, much of which is probably available elsewhere online, particularly on the club's website.

-The VCT was originally the Abingdon branch of the Norfolk and Western RR, running as a spur from Abingdon, VA to West Jefferson, NC. It was both a freight and passenger line that also brought mail to the mountain communities along the route, however it began originally aas a way to export iron and then timber from the area and, as such, was an economic link to the "outside world."

-Iron never was a very big export and the timber boom ended in the 1930s. Steam locomotives were being replaced with diesel and the Virginia Creeper became the last steam locomotive in the U.S., which began to bring in railroad enthusiasts and tourists around 1955. However, this was not sufficient to keep the line alive and N&W ended service in 1977 after having previously changed it from a daily to a weekly run.

-N&W intended to salvage the rails, bridges, and trestles and these were sold to the Chicago Contracting Co. as scrap metal. This was long before the "rails to trails" movement of the 1980s but Dave Brillhart, MD and Dr. French Moore of Washington Co. were visionary in leading the charge to convert the right-of-way, which crossed private property, to a public trail.

-The law was such that as soon as the rails were removed, the right-of-way reverted to the original landowners, which is what happened in North Carolina and why the modern VCT does not include the section from Whitetop Mountain to West Jefferson, NC. This was prevented in Virginia, however through the purchase of the right-of-way by the towns of Abingdon and Damascus (1982) as well as the U.S. Forest Service (1978).

-In 1986 Congress designated the right-of-way as a National Rec. Trail and the trail was dedicated in June 1987 as trestle repairs were completed.

-An estimate in 1997 found 25,000 annual visits to the trail. A more complete survey in 2003 by the VCT Club showed an increase annully to 140,000 with an estimated $2.5 million spent by visitors. Clearly, the economic impact of the rail line continues in another form today from its original exporting intention.