Monthly Archives: December 2012

You’ll see pictures of this stately old trestle all over the web, but here’s the story.  It’s part of the Creeper Trail now and spans the confluence of the Middle Fork and the South Forks of the Holston River (a guy named Holstein was the first non-Native American to come paddling down this watery avenue…probably a million Native Americans paddled down it before he got here, so where are their names?  And who now knows those names?).   Anyway, the Creeper Railroad was built by the Virginia-Carolina Railroad, reaching Damascus from Abingdon (after a long, tortuous time a-building) in 1900.  Many a train thundered over this trestle, until the line fell into disrepair and was abandoned.  Some people with amazing vision created the Creeper Trail, an outstanding stretch of rails-to-trails.  It’s more fun than that hellish (for me) 12-mile Guest River Gorge trail on the railbed of the former Interstate Railroad (someone once asked me if I were a railfan, or “foamer” as they’re sometimes known, and I said, “No, I’m into trackage.” ), but just as scenic.  This trestle is so pleasant on a warm summer day.

This Backer’s Florists, which used to be located at the corner of Watauga and Charlemont Streets.  The location is a parking lot for a funeral home now.  It had snowed that night and I was out walking in it, with my camera, and I saw this view.  It’s been worked on a fair bit, since the original was an analog image.