Before there was Asheville, NC there were steep peaks, remote coves, rapid streams and rivers, isothermal air belts and a mild four season climate. 

Creating today’s Asheville and Buncombe County of colleges and universities, arenas and art galleries has cost more than was wisely spent.

Railroads and electric trolleys added their share to city and county debts, Just how this happened is laid out in a 96 page paperback by David C. Bailey, Joseph M. Canfield and Harold E. Cox. Their  study is called 

Copyright is 2000 by Harold E. Cox. Cox also sells the book from 80 Virginia Terrace, Forty Fort, PA 18704. This riveting, delightful retelling of Asheville’s 45 year flirtation with electric rail cars is also a cautionary tale about overspending.

In Part Three of its history of Asheville Lewis Green’s INDEPENDENT TORCH showcased early railroad debts, which began in 1875 with a $100,000 bond at 6% interest not retired until 1976.

Local Division No. 128 of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees struck in 1913 demanding a raise from 12 cents an hour. The union successfully held out for “a new starting pay of 19 cents per hour, increasing with time to 25 cents” (TROLLEYS, p. 26).

In 1926 Motormen and conductors  again went out on strike, idling 20 street cars and seven buses. A hoped for raise to 61 cents per hour was not realized and workers accepted the old package in which new employees could expect 45 cents, rising to 56 cents per hour (p. 29).
 

“Carmen worked two (nine hour) shifts, Sundays included. The first cars pulled out at 5:20 a.m. and the last cars pulled in (by) 11:45 p.m.” (p. 87).

Passengers alone never made the trolleys profitable. A sizable percentage of revenue was always derived from hauling freight short distances--including building materials for  city and county streets and roads (p. 45) as well as lumber (p. 67) and the heavy trunks of vacationers (p. 69). Boosters resented that Asheville remained a one railroad town--”at the mercy of the Southern” 
(p. 75). This may explain desperate  schemes to run short lines connecting to rival long distance carriers via Hendersonville, Rutherfordton or Burnsville. But  population was too small and terrain too forbidding to support multiple routes (p. 75).  Local dreamers were often  tweaked for their romance with what one wit  dubbed  “The Blatherskite Railroad” (p. 80).

One dream of 1904 called for an interurban line through the Swannanoa valley to Montreat (p. 80). Then came the 1905 proposal for a line  from Asheville to Hendersonville (p. 76). Twice (1904 and 1910) plans bubbled up to connect Asheville through Fairview and Hickory Nut Gap to Rutherfordton (p. 79). Since every line built was a net money loser, tax payers today can  be grateful that some dreams remained just that. 

Ultimately, jitneys, private automobiles and rubber wheeled passenger buses did the trolleys in. For they exploited 

“the inherent weakness of the street car itself ... the very fact that it received and discharged passengers into the street” (p. 86). 

-OOO-

written in Canyon Lake, Texas for Asheville TRIBUNE