The price of progress in the Swannanoa Gap
Momentum builds to recognize and honor the incarcerated laborers who brought the railroad to Western North Carolina
Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
February 9, 2021
The total number of the mostly African American incarcerated laborers who died building a series of tunnels, including High Point Tunnel, through the Swannanoa Gap is unknown, but estimated to be as high as 300. Approximately 3,000 inmates were forced to work on the project from 1877-79. Photo by Fred McCormick
The darkness at the center of the 1,832-foot long Swannanoa Tunnel, the last of the seven mountain-piercing structures from which trains emerge on their upward journey west from Old Fort to Ridgecrest, is vast. Small pinholes of light are visible in the distance on each side, but do little to pierce the velvety blackness deep in the heart of the mountain.
Daylight famously entered Buncombe County through the massive hole in March of 1879, as declared by Western North Carolina Railroad President and Chief Engineer James H. Wilson in a telegraph to then-governor Zebulon Vance, ushering with it a new age of prosperity to the Land of Sky. While conquering the Swannanoa Gap was heralded as one of the greatest engineering feats of its day, the complete story of the WNC Railroad Mountain Division was largely relegated to the shadows of history, but a pair of projects are shining a new light on the lives sacrificed in the name of progress.
It took more than 3,000 men — mostly African American, many convicted of petty crimes — approximately two years to lay the 9 miles of tracks that would be needed to navigate the 1,100- foot climb from Henry Station, just 3 miles west of Old Fort at the time, to the western portal of the Swannanoa Tunnel in present-day Ridgecrest. The conditions of the stockades in which they were held were brutal, and the labor was as unceasing as it was punishing.
Memorializing the men who were instrumental in Asheville’s transformation from a sleepy mountain village to a thriving modern city as they were forced to build the vital infrastructure needed to bring industry to the state’s mountainous region is the mission of The Railroad and Incarcerated Laborer (RAIL) Memorial Project, led by UNC Asheville Professor of History Dr. Dan Pierce and City of Marion Mayor Steve Little. The initiative, which began raising money in the summer to fund a plaque at Andrews Geyser, will help preserve the legacy of the laborers near the site where one of the makeshift stockades in which they were held once stood.
Though unrelated, the launch of The RAIL Project roughly coincided with the culmination of eight years of research by Warren Wilson College professors and longtime friends, Kevin Kehrberg and Jeffrey A. Keith. Kehrberg, a professor of music, and Keith, a historian and professor of global studies, co-authored a thorough investigation into the popular folk and bluegrass song “Swannanoa Tunnel” and its haunting origins as one of the hammer songs utilized by the workers as they toiled at gunpoint.
“Somebody Died, Babe,” published in August of 2020 by Atlanta-based digital magazine The Bitter Southerner, highlights the “story of blood, greed and obfuscation” and how the origins of the tune, also known as “Asheville Junction” and popularized in the early 20th century by Bascom Lunsford, are rooted in the tragic deaths of many of the incarcerated Black men who lost their lives in the Swannanoa Gap.
Set in stone
The Swannanoa Tunnel has long been a fixture in the lives of Pierce and Little, who both attended Camp Ridgecrest as children and returned later as counselors. Pierce, a native of WNC, moved to Ridgecrest five years ago with his wife, who he met while working at the camp in the 1980s.
The move was a dream fulfilled for the couple, according to Pierce, who quickly began exploring the area he had known since he was a child.
Dr. Dan Pierce, a Ridgecrest resident and history professor at UNC Asheville, met with Marion mayor and railroad historian Steve Little on his porch to discuss the importance of recognizing the incarcerated laborers who built the railroad through the Swannanoa Gap. They are now leading The RAIL Project, which is raising money to erect a memorial at Andrews Geyser. Photo by Fred McCormick
“A lot of our walks would take us near the railroad, particularly going down the Point Lookout Greenway,” he said. “Being a historian of this region, and going back and reading books like Wilma Dykeman’s “The French Broad” and John Ehle’s “The Road,” really made me reflect on how there was nothing here to commemorate the thousands of people who built the railroad.”
In 2020, as the world struggled under the weight of a global pandemic, the U.S. was experiencing a concurrent internal crisis in the wake of the death of George Floyd, as the country was once again grappling with its history of oppression of Black people.
“There are people buried right here and we don’t know anything about them,” Pierce said. “There is a little hint on a nearby state historical marker that says the tunnel was constructed by ‘convict labor,’ but that’s it.”
N.C. Highway Historical Marker P-46, at the intersection of Royal Gorge Road and Yates Avenue in Ridgecrest, sits above the Swannanoa Tunnel ad credits its construction to “convict labor.” Photo by Fred McCormick
Driven by a desire to find a way to contribute something of value in his own community, Pierce invited Little to his porch for what turned out to be a three-hour conversation about the impact of the railroad on the region and the importance of recognizing the laborers who were forced to build it.
There are few people as familiar with the WNC Railroad Mountain Division as Little, who wrote his thesis on the subject when he was a history major at Wake Forest University. Upon graduating from law school in 1977, he moved to the county seat closest to Ridgecrest. In Marion, where Little would go on to serve on the city council for 24 years before he was first elected mayor in 2009, he would continue his tireless research on the construction of the railroad through the nearby Swannanoa Gap.
“I had so much admiration for what Dan was proposing with this memorial,” said Little, who in 2010 self-published “Tunnels, Nitro and Convicts: Building the Railroad That Couldn’t Be Built,” a condensed history of the project. “In fact, I actually felt bad that I had never thought of it myself, so I was happy to support the effort in any way I could.”
Pierce and Little formed The RAIL Project Steering Committee, which features 11 members, including Old Fort Police Chief Melvin Lytle, UNC Asheville Police Chief Eric Boyce, WNC Historical Association Executive Director Anne Chesky Smith and Old Fort Mountain Gateway Museum Director RoAnn Bishop. The group has raised roughly $13,000 of its $20,000 goal to fund the installation of a stone marker featuring a granite plaque with an inscription detailing the use of incarcerated laborers in the construction of the nearby railroad. The text will detail how the former site of the Round Knob Hotel, a luxurious destination for rail travelers until it burned down in 1903, previously served as a prison stockade.
The back of the memorial, intended to resemble an existing marker about the geyser, will feature the names of approximately 120 people identified by the 1880 census who were incarcerated there at the time, and those of some who were killed as they attempted to escape. The vast majority of the names of the workers who built the railroad were omitted from history by the record keepers of the day.
City of Marion Mayor Steve Little, who has devoted much of his life to researching the WNC Railroad Mountain Division, is one of the founders of The RAIL Project. The organization’s steering committee is raising money for a memorial at Andrews Geyser recognizing the incarcerated laborers who built the railroad and tunnels from Old Fort to Ridgecrest. Photo courtesy of Steve Little
Although railroad work through the Swannanoa Gap began nearly a decade after the conclusion of the Civil War, the conditions for Black prisoners were in some ways more brutal than the practices commonly associated with slavery, according to Little.
“The slave owner had a financial investment, and wouldn’t typically work slaves to death if they were sick or injured,” he said. “But the convict was viewed as expendable, and they would often work him to death because they could easily ship in another one. It’s difficult to imagine anything more horrifying than being an African American man sentenced to that kind of labor in those conditions.”
A lasting tune from a murderous business
People have been singing “Swannanoa Tunnel” in the Appalachians and beyond for well over a century, and Kehrberg and Keith were among them, long before they began teaching at Warren Wilson College. Kerhberg, the son of a music professor, grew up in rural Kansas and performed professionally as a standup bass player with Weaverville native Chris Sharp while attending graduate school at the University of Kentucky.
“When I started playing with Chris around 2007, that was one of the songs we performed,” he said.
Keith, a native of Kentucky, met Kehrberg while attending graduate school at the same institution. The song left a lasting impression on him when he watched Sharp and Grammy Award-winning fiddler and banjo player John Hartford, who passed away in 2001, perform it live.
“I remember thinking, wow, that’s a cool song,” he recalled.
Of course, the version of the song and its foreboding lyrics about a cave-in at the tunnel first heard by Kehrberg, Keith and nearly everyone, does little to convey the awful reality from which it originated.
Keith and Kehrberg taught a course together at Warren Wilson for the first time in 2012, and their disciplines complemented each other in a way that was uniquely suited to explore the relationship between work and music in Appalachia.
Jeff Keith, a history professor at Warren Wilson College, coauthored a an investigation into the origins of the song “Swannanoa Tunnel,” which began as a hammer song among incarcerated laborers forced to work on the railroad. Photo courtesy of Warren Wilson College
“We turned to this song that had the name of the place we both now lived, and we knew it had to have a story,” Keith said. “We were given permission to visit the tunnel by Ridgecrest, because it’s located on their property. We then found some state documents, just as it says in the article, and we saw the connections immediately with our students. We were blown away and quickly realized we needed to go further because the students were motivated to find more by what we learned.”
As they uncovered additional information about the song, and the conditions that inspired it, the educators were determined to preserve the cultural legacy of “Swannanoa Tunnel.”
“With so-called convict labor, the idea was let’s arrest people so we can put them to work and not pay them,” Kehrberg said. “So this really was about taking advantage of people for economic gains, and Asheville wouldn’t be what it became without these people who were often wrongfully convicted, forced to work and many of them died.”
As their journey progressed, the two professors were determined to hear the song as few people today have: a slow, sorrowful hammer song echoed by the voice of a Black man.
Doing the impossible, twice
Years ago, Little wrote and starred in a powerful presentation told through the perspective of a fictional convict laborer. He performed the one-man show in various locations, including Mars Hill University and a private performance for the descendants of Wilson, the former president of WNC Railroad and chief engineer for the construction project.
Dressed in the rough, hand-sewn prison uniform like those worn by the laborers, Little delivered a monologue while portraying a man from the eastern side of the state who was arrested, convicted and shipped by train to Henry Station to be housed in a stockade nearby. While the tale was created by Little, it reflects what he has learned after a lifetime of research.
“Most of the prisoners came from the eastern part of the state,” he said. “Most of them had never even heard of mountains before, they were unfamiliar with snow and they couldn’t have imagined the cold winters they had to endure.”
Through the character he portrays, Little offers painful detail of the working conditions, which began for many with instructions to find a flat smooth rock to be used as a tool for clearing a flat 15-foot-wide path on which tracks could be laid. While the task left hands bloodied, blistered and numb, it was far less harrowing and deadly than others.
If disease or malnutrition didn’t kill a prisoner, cave-ins were among the next likely causes of death. The railroad project marked one of the first uses of Nobel’s Blasting Oil, now commonly known as nitroglycerin. The substance was mixed with sawdust and cornmeal to create a paste used to blast large chunks of mountains into heavy rubble, which was then retrieved and removed from the hole by the incarcerated laborers. At least 120 men died as openings collapsed on top of them while building Jarrett’s, Lick Log, McElroy, High Ridge, Burgin and the Swannanoa Tunnels.
Looking east through McElroy Tunnel, the shortest of the six between the former site of Henry Station and Ridgecrest, is Lick Log Tunnel. The structures were built by incarcerated, mostly African-American laborers in the late 1870s. Photo by Fred McCormick
Those who died did so while being forced to work on a project that was believed to be impossible just years before it began.
“A lot of legislators complained about the project due to the fact that they believed it was a waste of time because it couldn’t be done,” Little said.
The prevailing historical narrative of the completion of the Swannanoa Tunnel, which now runs under I-40, quickly became one of engineering marvel, as Wilson was heralded for precisely lining up crews as they blasted the mountain simultaneously from the east and west, according to Little.
Wilson was uniquely suited for the task, he added, but the former Confederate officer demanded unprecedented and dangerous feats of strength from the incarcerated men. Particularly as the deadline for completing the railroad project loomed.
“Right near the intersection of Mill Creek and Old U.S. 70 is where Henry Station was located, and before this project was completed it was as far west as the train would go in N.C.,” Little said. “This is the spot where hundreds of men picked up the 17-ton Salisbury off the tracks and pushed it up the mountain over the stagecoach road to the western portal of the future Swannanoa Tunnel.”
The former site of Henry Station, where hundreds of African American incarcerated laborers lifted the Salisbury locomotive off the tracks before pushing it up the Blue Ridge Escarpment to the Swannanoa Tunnel, lies in the distance of this stretch of tracks. The spot was the western-most stop on the railroad in N.C. until 1879. Photo by Fred McCormick
The Herculean feat, which required temporary tracks to be set in front of the locomotive as it was pulled up the Blue Ridge Escarpment, was intended to expedite the process of removing the massive rocks blasted away by nitroglycerin.
“To really understand what these men had to do, you have to consider that the stagecoach road was too steep to accommodate the train, and they couldn’t stop and rest during this process,” Little said.
As the state celebrated the completion of the Swannanoa Tunnel, a cave-in reportedly claimed the lives of 20 laborers.
Discovering Love
While the song about the famous tunnel would go on to find a wide audience of mostly white fans of bluegrass and folk music, the triumphant narrative of the completion of the railroad essentially erased its brutal roots.
“When we realized that the collapse of the tunnel was not a collapse on a passenger train, which the song kind of evoked in my lazy imagination, but instead a collapse during construction, that was really interesting to me,” Keith said. “When we dug a little bit and started to see all of these incredible works of scholarship about the so-called convict labor system, I thought, ‘this is the story of racial oppression and resource extraction.’”
Warren Wilson College professor and musicologist Kevin Kehrberg began working on what would become “Somebody Died, Babe” in 2012 with his longtime friend and colleague Jeffrey Keith. Photo courtesy of Warren Wilson College
Much of the work for the project, which donated all payments for the story to the South Asheville Cemetery Association and Building Bridges of Asheville, involved researching the history of the railroad project and the song itself, but a single discovery resonated with Kehrberg and Keith in a powerful way.
Their work led them to a phonodisc of Will Love, who was listed in the archive as a “colored janitor,” but was actually a mail carrier who served the East Campus of Trinity College — one of two undergraduate colleges at Duke University — in the early 20th century. In the 1939 recording, which is embedded in “Somebody Died, Babe,” Love sings “Asheville Junction” in its original style, banging on a nearby surface to imitate the sound of hammer blows.
“It launched us into a whole new direction,” Kehrberg said. “It was a missing piece that allowed us to seek out connections and explanations. That recording inspired us, through Jeff’s efforts, to look for family members of Love.”
The Warren Wilson professors included what they learned from the descendants of Love, including his granddaughter, in their story. Through connecting with Kehrberg and Keith, the family heard the recording for the first time.
“The trip (to Durham) was a remarkable experience,” Kehrberg said. “For me it brought to life this notion of the gulf between white perception and Black reality. We definitely went there with a notion of who we thought Will Love was, and what he did, but what we ended up learning was that our impression of who he was as a person was off-base.”
A monumental moment in history
“Somebody Died, Babe” was published in August of 2020, at the height of an Asheville controversy that continues today. In response to widespread protests centering around the 75-foot tall obelisk in Pack Square honoring Vance, who owned slaves and fought as an officer in the Confederate army for the right to keep them, Buncombe County and the City of Asheville established a task force to explore removing or repurposing the monument.
The task force held its final meeting, Feb. 4, after recommending the removal of the monument in November. While the municipalities evaluate the cost of removal, state Rep. John Ager, who represents the 115th district comprising much of eastern Buncombe County, is advocating for repurposing the stones on the existing structure to tell the story of the incarcerated laborers who built the railroad.
In a January guest column in The Asheville Citizen Times, Ager calls the construction of the railroad “the creation story for the city.”
Pierce agrees with Ager, who is also supporting The RAIL Memorial Project, and sees this moment in history as an opportunity to recognize the lives sacrificed in the name of progress.
The railroad tracks approaching the eastern portal of the Swannanoa Tunnel, the longest of the six tunnels constructed between 1877-79 by incarcerated laborers. Photo by Fred McCormick
“There is a lot of momentum for this right now,” he said. “In fact, a lot of people believe it’s way past time. Right now, we’re having a lot of legitimate discussions on taking memorials down, but we also need to think about what we need to put up.”
The RAIL Project memorial in Old Fort, which has been endorsed by the towns of Old Fort and Black Mountain, will provide a tangible way to remember the laborers whose individual stories were never told, but whose collective story is one of a painful chapter in the region’s history.
“We know there are many graves in that area, we just don’t know how many or who is in them,” Pierce said. “That’s something else that we’re looking into, and we may never know how many people are buried there, but we would like to find out.”
Preserving the legacy of those forced to endure the harsh conditions of the convict labor system is not only important, according to Little, it feels as if its “ordained” at this moment in time.
“People’s awareness has been elevated to the point where we’re starting to realize our country was built from the sacrifices that destroyed so many people,” he said. “Without them, and their work, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”
For more information about The Railroad Incarcerated Laborer (RAIL) Memorial Project, including background on the initiative and donation options, visit therailproject.org. To view the January webinar — “That’s (Not) My Home: Music, Racism and the Railroad’s Arrival in Buncombe County — featuring Kehrberg and Keith, visit this link.