If you grew up around here, a summer trip to Tweetsie Railroad beckons to become one of your annual traditions. Historically, what you ride today actually began as the first real leap of transportation technology for western North Carolina mountain folk. The iron horse hauled passengers between Johnson City, Tennessee and Boone for 30 years. What was known to earlier generations as the latest and best creation of mankind in its day, has become known as a theme park for almost 70 years.
The original Tweetsie rail line shut down in 1948. That was about the time when television was on the rise. Taking a page from movie genres, TV channels showed a lot of westerns, watched by a lot of kids. The Lone Ranger, John Wayne and Hopalong Cassidy were western heroes and actors and thanks to national media, they all became one and the same.
Engine #12 was sold to a venture in Harrisonburg, Virginia to be the star locomotive for the Shenandoah Central Railroad, a tourist attraction. Unfortunately, in 1954, Hurricane Hazel roared through, tearing up the track beyond what investors were willing to rebuild.
Photo: Engine #12’s stand-in, 190, which is running this summer. Gets you around the mountain just fine.
That’s when Grover Robbins, a timber entrepreneur entered the picture. He bought the engine and brought it back to the North Carolina mountains. His idea was similar to the Virginia venture, only themed to fit the western kid craze of the era.
And boy, did it. There was even press coverage of when the engine was brought up the mountain. It was hauled to Hickory by train, then trucked up to the park through Lenoir. School kids stood out by the highway to watch it pass.
People flocked to Tweetsie every summer. Kids got a real life experience of being in a setting similar to what they watched every week on TV. That first year, the tracks around the mountain were incomplete so the train had to back down to complete its run, but that didn’t bother anybody. It was a fantasy step back in time.
Grover and company took the western idea seriously. He hired Fred Kirby to handle marshaling duties. Fred safely guarded a shipment of gold around the mountain and back to the same town from which it came. He had the best cap pistol of anybody. Plus, he was a star, thanks to being the Carolina’s own singing cowboy. On WBTV in Charlotte, Fred yodeled western songs while showing episodes of the Little Rascals every Sunday at 12:30pm. He was the man.
In those days, wayward cowboys attempted robbery at one stop on the rail line and Indians ran through the cars at another, creating terror for kids not sure of how make-believe it was all supposed to be. Fred (or a duly designated deputy) made sure the passengers all got back to town, safe with a memory of what it was like to be in not one, but two gun fights. Nowadays, the train makes the same two stops but the performance is cow-person only, no reference to the Cherokee at all. Let’s call what they do today, ‘cowboy improv.’ Kids still love it.
The park, built around Tweetsie, includes much more than the train. Attractions have been added over the years. A ski lift turned ride takes folks to what used to be called ‘magic mountain,’ just one of three levels of machines that will spin you, turn you upside down or let mice sing to you in a cheese factory. You get in line for whatever experiences you want.
The place kinda has it all. It’s a summer’s long offer to come visit the past with a healthy dose of mid-century modern kitsch as part of the mixture. It has a rail-fan element to it, allowing you to experience as your great-great-great did over a century ago. Once across the Catawba River, Tweetsie is less than an hour away by automobile.
It’s a place to go be a kid again, or reflect on when you were one. A tradition to be passed along to the next generation.
