Cut logs were moved in the United States by water, by horse and mule, and by steam locomotives on narrow gauge rail. Out from the saw mills, lumber companies built rail lines into the forests. Spurs need not last and some were constructed with wood rails. These rail lines facilitated logging, and also provided area farmers improved movement of products. In Martin County, the Jamesville and Washington (J&W) Rail line was built with English investment about 1870 from Jamesville for logging the hinterlands of the pocasin-dotted Farm Life and Griffins Township areas and was completed to near Washington, Beaufort County, in 1877. The J&W line passed about 4 miles east of Farm Life. The narrow gauge (36 inches) line was known as the “Jolt and Wiggle” for the quality of its ride. Along the new J&W line, Dymond City, a small boom town grew up. With the end of large-scale commercial logging in the immediate area around 1900, the railway died along with Dymond City, now grown over in a new growth of trees,1,2. The use of Atlantic White Cedar for roofing shingles, also known as juniper, began early in Martin County with exports to Barbados and Jamaica in the 18th century and then led the timber industry in Martin County to flourish in the 1880’s and 1890’s. After the Civil War, Dennis Simmons and William J. Hardison sold shingles in Norfolk and Baltimore and prospered3. In about 1885, Dennis Simmons Lumber Company’s Astoria Mill just west of Jamesville was considered the largest producer of shingles in the United States. Before the logging boom, Atlantic White Cedar was dense in the upland fresh-water marshlands (pocosins) of coastal North Carolina and New Jersey. Depletion of abundant cedar in Martin County occurred around 1900. Cutting the cedar forests contributed to long-term degradation of water quality in the inland rivers and sounds of the region. With the forests to slow water flow, the underlying peat of the pocosins acted as charcoal filters which concentrated and held heavy metals and nitrogen4. With the forests removed, rains flushed more nitrogen and metals into the rivers. Along with many other effects, including gross overfishing, previously abundant fisheries (herring and others) of the Albemarle/Pamlico estuary had disappeared by 1950. 4. 1. Internet site; Martin County NC tourism: http://www.visitmartincounty.com/about_mc/jamesville.htm 2. Martin County Heritage, 1980, Martin County Historical Society, pg 58-60, Dymond City a Ghost Town 3. Francis Manning collection, East Carolina University library 4. US Fish & Wildlife Service Bulletin, Sept 1998, Vol XXII, no. 5, pp18-19.