Thursday, October 28, 2010

"Carolina Special"



The pinnacle of dramatic railroading in the eastern United States was the cresting of the Saluda grade by Southern Railway's Carolina Special, powered by a green and gold trimmed locomotive with a helper on the rear. This train, which ran from Charleston, South Carolina to Cincinnati, Ohio was a typical passenger train of the steam era. It consisted of mail and baggage cars, coaches, a diner and Pullmans. It once boasted an observation car marked "Carolina Special."

Text Source: Southern Steam Trains

Click on photograph for a larger image.
_______________

Permalink

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Mitchell's Peak: Above the Clouds (1893)


(click on photograph for larger image)

Mount Mitchell is the highest peak of the Appalachian Mountains and the highest peak in the eastern United States. It was the highest point in any state of the United States until Texas joined the union in 1845. The nearest higher point east of the Rocky Mountains is Harney Peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Mount Mitchell is located near Burnsville in Yancey County, North Carolina, in the Black Mountain subrange of the Appalachians, and about 32 miles (51 km) northeast of Asheville. It is protected by Mount Mitchell State Park and surrounded by the Pisgah National Forest. The mountain was named after Elisha Mitchell, a professor at the University of North Carolina, who determined its height in 1835 and fell to his death at nearby Mitchell Falls in 1857, having returned to verify his earlier measurements.

Source: Wikipedia
_______________

Permalink

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Asheville Farm School

In 1894, the Asheville Farm School officially opened with twenty-five boys attending and a professional staff of three people. It was not until 1923 that the school had its first graduating class. In 1936, the first post high school programs in vocational training were begun. It was hoped that this type of training would give the students more prospects in the job market. In 1942, the junior college division was established. The Asheville Farm School continued as a boys unit in high school studies. The Dorland-Bell School of Hot Springs was joined with the Farm School, which brought high school age girls to campus. The Warren Wilson Vocational Junior College was joined with them under our one administration.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

The Manor (Asheville, NC) 1920s

The Manor and Cottages compose a picturesque small historic district, evocative of Asheville's dramatic turn-of-the-century resort town boom era. The Manor, a resort with an English inn atmosphere conceived by Thomas Wadley Raoul and his father William Greene Raoul, was begun in 1898 on a 32-acre tract of land acquired by the elder Raoul, a railroad magnate. To compete against the lucrative hotels and numerous boarding houses in Asheville, the Raoul family also developed a village of individually designed cottages adjoining the Manor, one of the Nation's earliest planned residential parks. Suffering from tuberculosis, Thomas Raoul moved to Asheville and oversaw the development of Albemarle Park, the dignified name his mother chose for the complex.