Overview | |
---|---|
Locale | Southeastern United States |
Dates of operation | 1869–1894 |
Predecessor | East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad |
Successor | Southern Railway |
Technical | |
Track gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge |
Previous gauge | 5 ft (1,524 mm) American Civil War era and converted to 4 ft 9 in (1,448 mm) in 1886 [1] |
The East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad (ETV&G) was a rail transport system that operated in the southeastern United States during the late 19th century. Created with the consolidation of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad and the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad in 1869, the ETV&G played an important role in connecting East Tennessee and other isolated parts of Southern Appalachia with the rest of the country, and helped make Knoxville one of the region's major wholesaling centers. In 1894, the ETV&G merged with the Richmond and Danville Railroad to form the Southern Railway. [2]
While efforts to establish a railroad in East Tennessee began in the 1830s, financial difficulties stalled construction until the late 1840s. The East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad was built between 1847 and 1859, connecting Knoxville, Tennessee, with Dalton, Georgia. [3] The East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad was built between 1850 and 1856, connecting Knoxville with Bristol, Tennessee. [3] Knoxville financier Charles McClung McGhee formed a syndicate which purchased both lines to form the ETV&G in 1869, and largely through McGhee's efforts, the new ETV&G bought out numerous other rail lines across the region. [2] By 1890, the ETV&G controlled over 2,500 miles (4,000 km) of tracks in five states. [4]
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, East Tennessee struggled to overcome the economic isolation created by its natural barriers, namely the Blue Ridge Mountains on the south and east and the Cumberland Plateau on the north and west. Shortly after the advent of railroads in the 1820s, the region's business leaders began discussing railroad construction as a way to relieve this isolation. In the mid-1830s, several businessmen, among them Knoxville physician J. G. M. Ramsey, planned and promoted a line connecting Cincinnati and Charleston (which would have passed through East Tennessee), but the Panic of 1837 doomed this initiative. [2]
In 1836, a group of businessmen chartered the Hiwassee Railroad, based in Athens, Tennessee, which sought to construct a line from Knoxville southward to Dalton, Georgia, where it would join a planned extension of the Charleston and Hamburg line, providing Knoxville with a link to the Atlantic Coast. [2] Like its competitors with the Cincinnati and Charleston, the Hiwassee ran into financial difficulties, and the Hiwassee Company nearly collapsed. The company was forced to focus on turnpike construction and iron production to survive. [2]
In 1844, the Charleston and Hamburg extension to Dalton was completed, and Knoxville and Athens businessmen again entertained the idea of building a rail line to Georgia. The Hiwassee Company was recharted in 1847 as the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad, and with renewed support from the Tennessee state legislature, work on the line began the following year. [2] By 1852, the line had reached Blair's Ferry (modern Loudon, Tennessee), just southwest of Knoxville. On June 22, 1855, the first train rolled into Knoxville over the East Tennessee and Georgia's tracks. [2]
On July 4, 1855, as Knoxvillians celebrated the arrival of the railroad, track work began on the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad, which sought to connect Knoxville with Bristol, Tennessee, where it would join existing tracks to create an unbroken rail line from New York to Memphis. Under the direction of Jonesborough physician Samuel B. Cunningham, this line reached New Market in 1856. After overcoming financial and engineering difficulties, the tracks from Knoxville to Bristol were completed on May 14, 1858, with Cunningham personally driving the last spike. [2]
During the 1850s, virtually every major business and political leader in Knoxville was involved in railroad building. In 1852, congressmen Horace Maynard, William Montgomery Churchwell, and John H. Crozier, along with attorney Oliver Perry Temple and minister Thomas William Humes, chartered the Knoxville and Kentucky Railroad, which planned to build a line northward into Kentucky, where it would join existing lines to Cincinnati and Louisville. [2] By the outbreak of the Civil War, however, this company had laid just nine miles of track. [2]
The railroads in East Tennessee provided a major supply route between Virginia and the Deep South, and thus both Confederate and Union forces considered the region of vital importance. On November 8, 1861, East Tennessee Union loyalists destroyed five railroad bridges, forcing the Confederate government to invoke martial law in the region. [2] Throughout the war, both Confederate and Union forces destroyed railroad tracks and facilities to prevent them from falling under the other's control. [2]
After the war, Knoxville businessman Charles McClung McGhee (1828–1907) and several other investors formed a syndicate which purchased both the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad and the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad. In 1869, the two lines were consolidated to form the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad, with Thomas Calloway as president, and McGhee and Richard T. Wilson as agents. As a nexus between northern financiers and local interests, McGhee was able to obtain for the ETV&G large amounts of capital, and the new company rapidly expanded. [2]
In 1869, the ETV&G bought the Knoxville and Kentucky Railroad, which had been revived after the war, and over the subsequent decade extended its tracks to the Kentucky state line at Jellico. [2] During this same period, the ETV&G acquired the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, [2] which connected Memphis and Chattanooga, the Georgia Southern Railroad, which connected Dalton with Rome, Georgia, and the Macon and Brunswick Railroad, which connected Macon, Georgia, with Brunswick, Georgia on the Atlantic Coast. By 1882, the ETV&G had completed tracks from Rome to Macon, connecting these last two lines. [5]
In the early 1880s, the ETV&G managed to build a line through the rugged French Broad valley along the Tennessee-North Carolina state line to join with the Western North Carolina Railroad system, and provide a direct link from Knoxville to Asheville. [2] The company also built a line connecting its tracks at Clinton with the Cincinnati Southern Railway tracks at Harriman. [4] By 1890, the ETV&G controlled 2,500 miles (4,000 km) of tracks, stretching as far south as Meridian, Mississippi, and Mobile, Alabama, westward to Memphis, and eastward to Brunswick. [6]
In the mid-1880s, overspeculation in railroad construction began to take its toll on the ETV&G's finances. In 1886, the company was reorganized as the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway (as opposed to "Railroad"), and eventually came under the control of the Richmond Terminal Company conglomerate. After the collapse of Richmond Terminal in the early 1890s, New York financier J. P. Morgan formed the Southern Railway, which purchased the ETV&G and the Richmond and Danville Railroad, and consolidated the two in 1894. [4] In 1982, the Southern Railway was acquired by the Norfolk Southern Corporation, which currently manages most of the former ETV&G system.
The Southern Railway was a class 1 railroad based in the Southern United States between 1894 and 1982, when it merged with the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) to form the Norfolk Southern Railway. The railroad was the product of nearly 150 predecessor lines that were combined, reorganized and recombined beginning in the 1830s, formally becoming the Southern Railway in 1894.
The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad was a United States Class I railroad formed in 1900, though predecessor railroads had used the ACL brand since 1871. In 1967, it merged with long-time rival Seaboard Air Line Railroad to form the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. Much of the original ACL network has been part of CSX Transportation since 1986.
The Tennessee Valley is the drainage basin of the Tennessee River and is largely within the U.S. state of Tennessee. It stretches from southwest Kentucky to north Alabama and from northeast Mississippi to the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina. The border of the valley is known as the Tennessee Valley Divide. The Tennessee Valley contributes greatly to the formation of Tennessee's three legally recognized sectors.
The Central of Georgia Railway started as the Central Rail Road and Canal Company in 1833. As a way to better attract investment capital, the railroad changed its name to Central Rail Road and Banking Company of Georgia. This railroad was constructed to join the Macon and Western Railroad at Macon, Georgia, in the United States, and run to Savannah. This created a rail link from Chattanooga, on the Tennessee River, to seaports on the Atlantic Ocean. It took from 1837 to 1843 to build the railroad from Savannah to the eastern bank of the Ocmulgee River at Macon; a bridge into the city was not built until 1851.
Nicknamed "The Hiwassee Route" for a scenic portion of the railroad along the Hiawassee River, the Atlanta, Knoxville and Northern Railway was chartered in 1896 as a successor to the Marietta and North Georgia Railway, which had entered receivership in 1891. It was part of a railroad system that ran from the community of Elizabeth near Marietta, Georgia, northward to Murphy in far western North Carolina, and to Delano just south of Etowah in southeast Tennessee.
The Southern Terminal is a former railway complex located at 306 West Depot Avenue in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. The complex, which includes a passenger terminal and express depot adjacent to a large railyard, was built in 1903 by the Southern Railway. Both the terminal and depot were designed by noted train station architect Frank Pierce Milburn (1868–1926). In 1985, the terminal complex, along with several dozen warehouses and storefronts in the adjacent Old City and vicinity, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Southern Terminal and Warehouse Historic District.
The Alabama Great Southern Railroad is a railroad in the U.S. states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. It is an operating subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corporation (NS), running southwest from Chattanooga to New Orleans through Birmingham and Meridian. The AGS also owns about a 30% interest in the Kansas City Southern-controlled Meridian-Shreveport Meridian Speedway.
The Southeastern Greyhound Lines, a highway-coach carrier, was a Greyhound regional operating company, based in Lexington, Kentucky, USA, from 1931 until 1960, when it became merged with the Atlantic Greyhound Lines, a neighboring operating company, thereby forming the Southern Division of The Greyhound Corporation, called also the Southern Greyhound Lines.
The Atlantic Greyhound Lines, a highway-coach carrier, was a Greyhound regional operating company, based in Charleston, West Virginia, USA, from 1931 until 1960, when it became merged with the Southeastern Greyhound Lines, a neighboring operating company, thus forming the Southern Division of The Greyhound Corporation, which division became called also the Southern Greyhound Lines (GL).
Charles McClung McGhee was an American industrialist and financier, active primarily in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. As director of the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway (ETV&G), McGhee was responsible for much of the railroad construction that took place in the East Tennessee area in the 1870s and 1880s. His position with the railroad also gave him access to northern capital markets, which he used to help finance dozens of companies in and around Knoxville. In 1885, he established the Lawson McGhee Library, which was the basis of Knox County's public library system.
Southern Railway 107 is a steam locomotive built in November 1887 by Baldwin Locomotive Works for Southern Railway. It is a 2-8-0 consolidation of Southern's G class.
The East Tennessee bridge burnings were a series of guerrilla operations carried out during the American Civil War by Union sympathizers in Confederate-held East Tennessee in 1861. The operations, planned by Carter County minister William B. Carter (1820–1902) and authorized by President Abraham Lincoln, called for the destruction of nine strategic railroad bridges, followed by an invasion of the area by Union Army forces then in southeastern Kentucky. The conspirators managed to destroy five of the nine targeted bridges, but the Union Army failed to move, and would not invade East Tennessee until 1863, nearly two years after the incident.
Alabama and Tennessee River Rail Road Company was incorporated under act of Alabama on March 4, 1848. With John Anderson Dilliard being principal shareholder. J. A. Dilliard a LaGrange, Tennessee, native originally from Decatur, AL was also a principal owner in the Lagrange and Memphis Railroad which became the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, along with Joseph Dilliard and H.B. Dilliard.
The East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad Company was incorporated under a special act of Tennessee on January 27, 1848.
The East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad Company was incorporated under special act of Tennessee on February 19, 1836 as the Hiwassee Rail Road Company.
The Greenback Depot is a former railroad station located in Greenback, Tennessee, United States. Built in 1914 by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N), the depot served rail freight and passengers traveling in and out of the Greenback area until 1954. Restored for use as a community events center by Ronald Edmondson in the early 2010s, the depot was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013 in recognition of its role in the area's transportation history.
Terminal Station, Macon, Georgia, is a railroad station that was built in 1916, and is located on 5th St. at the end of Cherry St. It was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by architect Alfred T. Fellheimer (1875–1959), prominent for his design of Grand Central Terminal in New York City in 1903. The station building is part of the Macon Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. While no longer an active train station, it has been the location of the Macon Transit Authority bus hub since 2014.