Blue Ridge and Atlantic Railroad

The Blue Ridge and Atlantic Railroad of the United States purchased the Cornelia-Tallulah Falls section of the North Eastern Rail Road in an attempt to connect Savannah, Georgia to Knoxville, Tennessee. Chartered in 1887, it went bankrupt in about 1892 and in 1898 its properties became part of the newly formed Tallulah Falls Railway.

The railway had an earlier history under the name Blue Ridge Railway which was organized before the American Civil War and had some rather ambitious projects which never were fully developed. One of these was to build a road from Walhalla, South Carolina to Chattanooga, Tennessee which would have shortened the route to Chattanooga by cutting off Atlanta and thus creating an economic boon to the border areas of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia with this connection to the West. The Blue Ridge Railway had begun business around the late 1840s and connected Charleston with the Upstate from the original tracks that ran from Charleston to Hamburg (North Augusta, SC today). It ran from Columbia to Greenville via what is now Newberry, SC. thence to Abbeville and Belton and from there to Greenville, SC. Mary Chesnut in her diaries mentions this road. It was for a long while the only upstate railroad until what is now Norfolk Southern built a road around 1890.

Because of its early operational period to the upstate, the Blue Ridge railroad has been the subject of legends and misinformation for over 100 years regarding the Fall of Richmond. Folks in Abbeville, S.C. will swear that Confederate President Jefferson Davis brought a steam locomotive train load of Confederate gold from Richmond's Banks to Abbeville and buried it near the present railroad tracks or near the Savannah River (now under water). People in Chester, SC and in Washington, Ga will tell the same tale. This is simply not true. Davis left Richmond by train for Danville, Va and from there he went to Charlotte, N.C. where he was coolly received; thence to Chester, South Carolina where tracks ended. The party continued to Abbeville via Conestoga wagons (wagon train) to Hodges, SC and thence to Abbeville.

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