Industry in NC

RailroadsFactories

Small Town BusinessesMill Villages

Railroads

• Asheville was a crossroads for agriculture, was also an immerging as a magnet for tourism, and loggers looking to harvest timber, and miners looking for large mineral deposits, with the growing market for tourism and logging needs for transportation where growing so a need for railroads where growing on march 27 1879 after several years of difficult construction the first railroad in Western NC entered buncombe county through Swannanoa.

Railroads

• The Murphy branch of the WNC railroad made it to the pigeon river (present day Canton) on January 5th 1882 and Waynesville later the same year.

• The railroads where often given nicknames by locales that caught on quite fast the two most popular nicknames where given to the first two railroads in NC where “eat taters and Where no clothes.” the safest way to travel to Boone was the ET railroad

Factories

• Rural people faced a difficult transition from farms to factories

• Most people worked in tobacco production plants and textile mills

• It was hard dangerous work and it involved whole families just like farm work had.

• Most workers lived in mill villages that company’s had created as a place for workers to live (with rent of course)

Mill Villages and Small Towns

• 92% of all textile and factory workers lived in mill villages

• The supervisors would send for children if they needed a little extra help in the factories

• The supervisors home had one floor and four rooms

• Mill villages had supervisors home, church, school, and a company store

• The mill operated pool halls and barber shops

Mill Villages and Small Towns

• Calvin smith was the pastor of the Presbyterian church

• L.P. Boggle, pastor was the pastor of the Methodist church

• George J. Studdert was the mayor of this small town