Situated in one of the most beautiful of valleys, 1200 feet above sea-level, surrounded by park-like forests and fertile valley lands, having an abundance of pure water and perfect drainage, with iron ore only a mile from coke, and a double water-gap giving easy passage for railroads, Big Creek Gap develops peculiar strength and possibilities of importance, when its relation is shown to those cities which will be its natural markets, and to the systems of railroads of which it will be the inevitable outlet. Within twenty miles of it lie three of the greatest railroad systems of the South. It is but thirty-eight miles from Knoxville, and eight miles of low-grade road, through a fertile blue-grass valley, peopled by intelligent, prosperous farmers, will put it in connection with magnetic and specular ores for the making of steel, or with the mountain of Bessemer ore at Cranberry. Its coke is about three hundred miles nearer to the Sheffield and Decatur furnaces than the Pocahontas coke which is now being shipped to them. It is nearer St. Louis and Chicago than their present sources of supply. It is the nearest point to the great coaling station for steamships now building at Brunswick. And it is one of the nearest bases of supply for Pensacola, which in turn is the nearest port of supply for Central and South America. No element of wealth or advantage of position seems lacking to make this place one of the controlling points of that vast commercial movement which is binding the North and the South together, and changing the relation of Kentucky to both, by making it the great highway of railway connection, the fresh centre of manufacture and distribution, and the lasting fountain-head of mineral supply. VI Attention is thus briefly directed to that line of towns which are springing up, or will in time spring up, in the mountain passes of the Cumberland, and are making the backwoods of Kentucky the fore-front of a new civilization. Through these three passes in the outer wall of Cumberland Mountain, and through that pass at Pineville in the inner wall behind Cumberland Gap--through these four it is believed that there must stream the railroads carrying to the South its timbers and coals; to the North its timbers, coal, and iron; and carrying to both from these towns, as independent centres of manufacture, all those products the crude materials of which exist in economic combinations on the spot. It is idle to say that all these places cannot become important. The competition will be keen, and the fittest will survive; but all these are fit to survive, each having advantages of its own. Big Stone Gap lies so much nearer the East and the Atlantic seaboard; Big Creek Gap so much nearer the West and the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and the Lakes; Cumberland Gap and Pineville so much nearer an intermediate region.