The Last Train from Elkland

THE LAST TRAIN FROM ELKLAND is a brief history of Elkland (present-day Todd), North Carolina, and the surrounding northwestern North Carolina mountain communities, including Bowie (present-day Fleetwood), West Riverside (present-day Brownwood), and Yuma (present-day Deep Gap). Not only is THE LAST TRAIN FROM ELKLAND a history of four northwestern North Carolina mountain communities, it is also about two railroads that operated in and around these communities: the Virginia-Carolina, also known as the “Virginia Creeper,” and the Deep Gap Tie and Lumber Company’s railroad, whose former Hassinger Lumber Company’s Shay logging locomotive operated alongside Gap Creek, from Deep Gap, in Watauga County, to the South Fork of the New River, near Fleetwood, in Ashe County, a distance of only about five miles.