[1] Future Confederate States Army officer Samuel McDowell Tate was instrumental in planning and sponsoring the construction of the first leg of the railroad in 1855, then in managing it in the era after the American Civil War.
Voters were angry about that law allowed purchasers of private bonds, that paid one third of the cost, to have the trains veer to their towns.
[6] Charles F. Fisher, later Colonel commanding the 6th North Carolina Regiment, who was killed leading a charge on a Union Army battery at the First Battle of Bull Run, had the initial contract to construct the line.
[1] Western North Carolina Rail Road Company - Eastern Division acquired the existing 76 miles (122 km) of railroad line.
[7] Western North Carolina Rail Road Company - Western Division acquired the franchise to build a railroad line from the French Broad River to Paint Rock, Alabama, and Ducktown, Tennessee, but did not complete construction of any part of the proposed railroad line.
2), which had been incorporated March 3, 1873 in anticipation of the sale of the property of the Western North Carolina Railroad Company - Eastern Division.
The first train, the Salisbury, weighed seventeen tons and was pulled using ropes by convicts who laid track in front of it.
[12] Nineteen African-American prisoners on their way to work on the Cowee Tunnel drowned in the Tuckasegee River weighted down by their shackles.