The Western North Carolina road was also an early project, and is a part of the system of public improvements contemplated by the state government. A charter was granted in 1855. The state authorized the issue of bonds for three-fourths of the stock, the remaining one-fourth being subscribed by private individuals. R. C. Pearson was chosen president, and J. C. Turner engineer. It was the latter gentleman who first surveyed a route over the Blue Ridge via Swannanoa gap. The construction of this road reached to within five miles of Morganton, when the war opened and all operations were stopped. After the war, under the successive administrations as president of A. M. Powell, S. M. D. Tate, and Major J. W. Wilson, work was continued. The latter gentleman, combining the office of engineer with that of president, took the first locomotive around the coils and through the tunnels into the Swannanoa valley. The road was sold and passed under its present management, which is associated with the Richmond & Danville company, in the spring of 1880. It has been completed to its junction with the E. T. V. & G. R. R., and is being pushed over and through the massive transverse chains of the plateau to its western terminus. The scenery along its lines is spoken of at various places in the following pages. The Blue Ridge has been crossed by the Spartanburg & Asheville railroad, and there is good ground for hope that the Carolina Central will be extended from Shelby to Asheville at an early day. All these enterprises are necessarily expensive, and consequently show the confidence which capitalists place in the future of the region whose resources will be opened up. On account of the secluded position of Western North Carolina, there is little to be said under the head of military reminiscences. The mountain men, in the War of 1812, shouldered their rifles and marched to distant climes, in defense of their country’s honor. During the late struggle, this section escaped the desolation which the greater portion of the South suffered. Stoneman’s Federal cavalry made a raid, after the “surrender” of Lee into the trans-Blue Ridge country. He passed by Hendersonville and Asheville, whence a Confederate fort had been erected. Dividing into small squads, his men pillaged the country as they went west. A dare-devil expedition was accomplished by the Federal raider Kirk, who, with his company of 325 East Tennesseeans, crossed the mountains, through Mitchell county into Burke, surprised a larger force of Confederates, and succeeded in capturing all their stores and taking the men prisoners of war.