Lewis D. Gasteiger, vice president of the new Pittsburgh Lumber Company in Carter County, Tennessee conspired with William Flinn, president of Booth & Flynn, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania construction firm to build a spur connection the East Tennessee & Western North Carolina railway. The ensuing railway connected Elizabethon to Laban, Tennessee and enabled unfinished lumber to the Southern Railway. The Laurel Fork Railroad was incorporated in April of 1910 and abandoned in 1925.

THE RAILROAD TO NOWHERE contains the stories of five northwestern North Carolina business ventures: the Copper Knob Mine (a.k.a. the Gap Creek Mine); "Cowles' Stand" (the A. D. Cowles & Co. Store); the Deep Gap Tie & Lumber Co. RR (the "Railroad to Nowhere"); the V. L. Moretz & Son Lumber Co. (formerly the Deep Gap Tie & Lumber Co.); and Appalachian Ski Mountain (formerly the Blowing Rock Ski Lodge). These businesses were all located in the North Carolina counties of either Watauga or Ashe (BOTH counties, in the case of the Deep Gap Tie & Lumber Co. Railroad). Like all business ventures, some were successful, some were, well, not so successful. (One of the businesses, Appalachian Ski Mountain, continues today, very much alive and healthy.) Even though these business were diverse in their activities - a copper mine, a general store, a railroad, a lumber company, a ski resort - they all can trace their roots back to one man: Calvin J. Cowles.

The six stories contained in this collection may all be different in their contents, but they all share one common theme: they are all set in North Africa. Scattered throughout the book are images from the author's postcard collection.

THE "VIRGINIA CREEPER" is a historically accurate (although the author admits having to use his "poetic license" a few times) novel about the rise and fall of the lumber/railroad town of Elkland (present-day Todd), N.C, the rise and fall of a lumber/passenger train, the Virginia-Carolina (aka the "Virginia Creeper"), and the rise and fall of a lumber company (the Hassinger Lumber Company) and the company town (Konnarock, Va.) the lumber company created.

G.B. Grayson and Henry Whitter were two of the most influential artists in the early days of country music. Songs they popularized--"Tom Dooley," "Little Maggie," "Handsome Molly," and "Nine Pound Hammer"--are still staples of traditional music. Although the duo sold tens of thousands of records during the 1920s, the details of their lives remain largely unknown. Featuring never before published photographs and interviews with friends and relatives, this book chronicles for the first time the romantic intrigues and tragic deaths that marked their lives and explores the Southern Appalachian culture that shaped their music.