Frograil

Stanly County, North Carolina, and it's Railroads

Contents:    Historic Overview    Railroad History    Current Ops    Railfanning    Bibliography

Historic Overview There are three railroads in Stanly County: A major class I, an historic short line, and a fairly new short line, which really isn't new at all. These three roads will be covered in detail, but first, a little geography lesson is necessary to put Stanly County in it's proper "place." The county lies some 30 miles east of Charlotte, and about 20 miles south of Salisbury. Today, it's still largely rural, but more and more "suburbanites" from Charlotte, Concord and Salisbury are moving in, and houses seem to be growing as fast as the corn. For a more extensive discussion of the geology and geography of the county, see the next section. The decades-long textile industry decline has been somewhat offset by the growth in the manufactured home (3 plants), aircraft tire (Michelin), and other industries, as well as the continued health of the Badin works of Alcoa, several remaining textile-related businesses, and several small industries. As of the 2000 census, there were 58,000+ residents of the county, but the lack of any decent 4-lane, thru highways has pretty much ensured our inability to garner any major industrial development in the future.

Geology and Geography.  Truly, the history of Stanly County's railroads began millions of years ago.  Two events happened over geologic time which had profound influence on the county's railroads:

On the eastern edge of the county, and extending maybe 30 miles further east, a series of volcanoes commenced to do their thing, leaving behind a fairly large area including what are now Morrow Mountain State Park and the Uwharrie National Forest.  These are wonderful places to hike and enjoy nature, but they are terrible places to build railroads.  Just to the north (today's I-85 corridor), and just to the south (today's US-74 corridor), there are much better, more logical routes.

Further to the east, the rocky "fall line" abruptly separates the piedmont from the coastal plain.  This is no mere curiosity, as the plain goes all the way to, and quite a ways out into, the ocean.  Again, this makes for great hiking, swimming, beer drinking, etc., but it makes for lousy deep sea ports.  Compared to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Savannah, Norfolk (especially), and to a lesser extent Wilmington and Charleston, the eastern North Carolina ports of New Bern, Morehead City and Beaufort were simply not created equal, and railroad activity to and from these latter secondary ports paled behind that of traffic to the great natural ports of the east coast.

There are other North Carolina geological features which have a fairly minor impact on Stanly County's railroading history:

Obviously, the mountains to the west precluded any efficient, easily constructed east-west route across the state.

There are some pretty dramatic rivers in the state, and crossing them required routes which took advantage of the most logical crossing points.  Chief rivers which bore an indirect effect on Stanly County's eventual railroads were the Roanoke (a real beast, and its crossing location pretty much dictated the railroad map in the state for many, many years), and the Yadkin/Pee Dee (a big river, which, before a series of dams was constructed, was one big-time tough cookie.  This river forms the eastern boundary of Stanly County, and is really an after effect of the volcanic period mentioned above.).

Because of the above, there were three fairly logical, relatively easy places to build railroads in the state:

• A north-south route thru the coastal plain.
• A northeast-southwest route.
• An east-west route from coastal deepwater to the Charlotte area.

All three routes were actually built, although the NE-SW route was more politically than geographically dictated, and today's rather strange-looking "North Carolina Railroad" is the result.

• The north-south route evolved away from the Wilson-Goldsboro-Wilmington routing to become the main line of the Atlantic Coast Line, as the Wilson-Fayetteville-Jacksonville, Florida, line became predominant over time.
• The NE-SW route has evolved into the NS (ex-Southern Railway) main from Lynchburg, Virginia, thru Greensboro-Salisbury-Charlotte and on to Atlanta. Likewise the Seaboard Air Line from Raleigh to Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Portsmouth, Virginia, evolved from this route.  Finally, the rather lightly traveled but still active North Carolina Railroad portion from Greensboro-Raleigh-Selma-Goldsboro is a secondary main today (and sees three passenger trains a day in each direction, plus a few freights), and is a direct descendent of this logical route (but in an illogical way!).
• Heading west from Wilmington, what would become the Seaboard Air Line main thru Lumberton-Hamlet-Monroe (and connections to Atlanta and Charlotte (and with the Clinchfield at Bostic) was built, and exactly follows the route shown on page 139 of Brown.

As a general comment, most historians dealing specifically with the Stanly County region seem to regard the coming and development of the railroad as one of those things to be taken for granted; the authors of Stanly County's definitive history are no exception.  While devoting an incredible 108 pages to the origin, development and status of the various churches in the county, Sharpe and Pepper devote a grand total of 8 paragraphs to the county's railroads!!

However, they indicate they do realize the tremendous effect the railroads had on the county:

"When the railroad came to the county in 1891 (this was the Yadkin Railroad), Albemarle had a population of less than 400, and the entire taxable property for Stanly was less than one million dollars. But with the coming of the railroad, three cotton mills were soon built, as was the giant aluminum plant at Badin. A few years later, a score of important industries had settled down for permanent business here in the Valley of the Yadkin."ii

It seems obvious that a pretty large percentage of the churches Sharpe and Pepper detail so meticulously would never have been in existence had not the coming of the railroads so broadly increased the standard of living in the county.

Likewise, Sharpe and Pepper devote 20 pages to the development of Pfeiffer College (very interesting reading, by the way), but fail to mention the obvious connection between the school (actually now a full university) and the railroad. When the school (them Mitchell Home) was relocated from Lenoir to Misenheimer in 1910, certainly one of the most important considerations to the school's leaders must have been the fact that the town of Misenheimer was directly on the railroad line from Salisbury to Albemarle. It would have been difficult, indeed, for the school and subsequent college to grow without that vital connection to the outside world.

To read about the history of the railroads themselves, go to the Frograil Stanly County Railroad History page, which is here.