Abstract:
The lumber business that began and spread across the state in the 1880s could not have done so without the logging railroad. So many logging firms relied on railroads to transport logs from the woods to the mills that North Carolina had one of the heaviest concentrations of such railroads in the country. While most were temporary, some grew from private carriers into modern common carriers that are still active today, such as the Durham & Southern and the Aberdeen & Rockfish. The last logging railroad in North Carolina was the line of the Bemis Hardwood Lumber Co., near Robbinsville, that ceased logging operations in 1947.