[citation needed] From 1890 to 2015 railroad operations contributed greatly to Erwin's economic and cultural identity.

Trains ran through Erwin in 1890, but by the end of the year, the company disbanded and all construction and operation ceased.

After acquiring 42% of Conrail in 1999, CSX became one of four major railroad systems in the nation and Erwin continued to host the rail yard, diesel shop, and car repair facility until 2015.

[citation needed] Erwin earned some notoriety in 1916 when the only known public execution of an elephant in Tennessee occurred in the community.

Erwin was a little more than 35 miles south of Kingsport, and as home to the region's largest railway yard they happened to have a 100-ton crane car that could lift the five-ton elephant.

[12] An estimated 2,500 people turned out at the local railway yard to see Mary hoisted by a crane to meet her demise.

Playwright George Brant won the 2008 Keene Prize for Literature for his a one-act play titled “Elephant’s Graveyard”, depicting this story.

[14][15] On May 19, 1918, four of Erwin's white citizens attacked a Black man named Tom DeVert during a poker game.

In the chaos, a teenage white girl named Georgia Lee Collins, who was passing by, was hit by a bullet.

'” At the height of this atrocity, the mob leaders planned to burn the homes of all of Erwin's Black citizens, but the local rail yard manager convinced them to forcibly evict them from the town instead.

The "Erwin Expulsion of 1918," as it has been called, led to the town becoming known as "the place where Blacks dare not go," according to an article in the Johnson City Press-Chronicle of June 17, 1979.

Town leaders attempted to fill the void by emphasizing a new identity for Erwin as an Appalachian tourist destination.

In September 2024, Erwin's riverside areas were heavily damaged by flooding as a result of Hurricane Helene.

Nearby is "Moaning Rock", a large boulder near the trail that is supposed to be the site of a long ago murder of a stranger.

According to local lore, the murdered man's spirit is still around, and if anyone stands on or even touches the rock, "...it moans as if under a heavy burden.

Tennessee State Route 395 connects Erwin with the rural parts of Mitchell and Yancey counties to the east in North Carolina, crossing the Unakas at the 3,100-foot (940 m) Indian Grave Gap (the road becomes North Carolina Highway 197 at the state line).