Chapter 3: Railroads and Their Vital Contribution to the Forming of Pinehurst

The explosive growth of railroads in the second half of the 1800s changed the landscape of the United States and made the formerly inaccessible forest resources of the Sandhills the home for the significant industry of timber, tar and turpentine production. With a rail connection, these products could now be shipped to ports and other locations in the United States and abroad.

From around 1870 to 1880, the tracks of the Raleigh and Augusta Railroad, later absorbed by the Seaboard Air Line Railway, crept below Cameron and another station was established at Manley (later named Vineland, and eventually Southern Pines), deep in the pine woods. Beyond this, the railroad extended toward South Carolina and Georgia and later made connections into Florida.¹  This extension of the railroad was the catalyst for industry to blossom in the Sandhills, a formerly isolated and ignored part of North Carolina.  

Note:  In the days before air travel, "air line" was a common term for the shortest distance between two points: a straight line drawn through the air (or on a map), ignoring natural obstacles (i. e., "as the crow flies"). Hence, a number of 19th century railroads used air line in their titles to suggest that their routes were shorter than those of competing roads.

Newcomers now travelled to the” pine barrens” of lower Moore County where the railroad also now offered freight transportation to support the lumber and turpentine industry.  The lumber, tar, and turpentine businesses were far and away the largest industries in Moore County.  In 1879, twenty-two turpentine distillers employed 382 men. Another 116 worked for the 26 sawmills. Barrel makers, 22 of them with 70 workers, made containers for the turpentine. Tracks of tall pines were felled by lumbermen, who in 1879 cut 40,566 cords of wood and sold it for $90,240.¹

Starting about 1880, Allison F. Page, a businessman in Blues Crossing (Aberdeen) bought numerous forested acres in the Sandhills from Aberdeen and west into the Sandhills towards Pinehurst to clear land for timber. To support his timber business, Mr. Page constructed a tramway on wooden rails from the rail line junction and sawmills in Aberdeen deep into the forest to a point some 2½ miles away called “Chapin’s Orchard”. 

 Wooden Railway through the Sandhills

By 1888, Page had converted the wooden tramway to rail and had reached deep into the forest to West End.  West End was originally known as “Victor” and the name was changed in 1890 to indicate the western end of the rail line.  In 1889 the railroad was chartered as the Aberdeen and West End Railroad.  This railroad also supported a fledgling peach business that was starting on cleared land in the Sandhills.  Although generally a freight line it was also listed as carrying passengers on one train per day in each direction between Aberdeen and Candor (said to have been named by three merchants who wished the town to be distinguished by frankness).³  This rail line is now the Aberdeen and Western Carolina  Railway Company.

This scene in Candor was taken about 1895 on the Aberdeen & West End RR on the depot platform.  The store of W.C. Petty is seen in the background and the platform filled with barrels of turpentine awaiting shipment.  Locomotives No. 1 and No. 2 are Baldwins built early in the company’s history around 1888 and 1889.²

No bridges spanning any creek or river were required on this rail route since it was laid out and built on a sandy ridge that extends from Aberdeen past Pinehurst, West End, and into Candor and beyond.  For this reason, locals called it the “no creek route.”²  This ridge and the rail line divides two major watersheds in North Carolina, waters to the northeast of the rail bed drain in a generally Northern direction to the Cape Fear River Basin and the lands southwest of the rail lines drain in a southerly direction to Drowning Creek and the Lumber River Basin. Only in 1923 when the Tufts wanted to expand their land holdings west of the Carolina Hotel and sell parcels in this area was the railroad roadbed rerouted off level land and a trestle built over what is now NC Route 5, creating the only bridge on this section of the line.

And so, when James Walker Tufts travelled to the Sandhills in search of the site for his Village, the area had not only a major north-south passenger line to allow guests to easily find their way to Pinehurst but also a local rail line with freight and limited passenger service serving the lands he eventually acquired.

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References:

1. The Story of Moore County, Two Centuries of a North Carolina Region, Manley Wade Wellman,           Moore County Historical Association (1974)
2. Railroading in the Carolina Sandhills, Volume 1: The 19^th Century (1825-1900), S. David Carriker,        Heritage Publishing Company (1985)
3. Origins of strange place names traced, McCandlish Phillips, an article in The Day (9/16/1970)
4. Moore County North Carolina 1747 - 1847, Blackwell P. Robinson, Moore County Historical    Association, Southern Pines NC (1956)