Silver
Creek
At approximately
the center of highway 50 north of this cache location, was the
Silver Creek stop on the Duck River Valley Narrow gauge / Columbia
spur of the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis
railroad.
Officially, Silver
Creek's depot was at mile post 73.8 and offered one siding and one
section house. The section house provided shelter for off duty
railroad workers, and was likely positioned just north of where
highway 50 is today. I have found no remnants of the section house
(likely lost during construction of the highway), but will continue
to dig through the Marshall County archives and will update the
page if new information is discovered.
This is an
image of a woodcut of a 4-4-0 locomotive from the 1880's, which was
typical on this route well through the 1920's.
Silver Creek served
as a flag stop along this line, where the train only stopped on a
signal (either by whistle or flag). This allowed the train to
service passengers in this low-demand area as needed, avoiding
unnecessary stops. If there was no signal the train would simply
pass by at full speed, or only slow partially depending on the
amount of traffic at the junction.
As a bonus, you can
see the Robert C. Harris House just across Highway 50 from the
cache location. This house is on the National Register of Historic
Places, and was built in the mid 1870's (the same time that the
rail line was under construction). The house is both very
interesting and beautiful, and I recommend taking the slight detour
up Joe Reeves road to check it out. From the cache location, go
north across hwy 50 for about 50 yards - the house will be the
first on the left. (The house is privately owned, so please only
view from the road)
You are looking for
a camouflaged waterproof match container containing only a log, so
you will need to bring your own writing
instrument.
Some history about
this rail line
The Duck River Valley
Narrow Gauge Railway received its charter in 1870 to begin
construction on a narrow gauge rail line extending from
Fayetteville to "a point near Johnsonville". Construction began in
Columbia, and headed southerly towards Fayetteville. By the spring
of 1877, the line from Columbia to Lewisburg offered reliable
transportation between the neighboring cities.
Construction
continued on a southeasterly path at a fast pace, and reached the
sleepy little town of Petersburg in 1879. The goal of the Duck
River Valley Narrow Gauge Railroad was to complete this line all
the way into Fayetteville, where it would connect with the standard
gauge line operated by the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis
Ry (NC&StL). While the Duck River Valley RR had been successful
at maintaining and operating this line, funds for the final
expansion into Fayetteville started to dry up.
In the fall of '79,
the decision was made to lease the line to NC&StL, injecting
much-needed resources into the project. The construction slowed
down quite a bit during this period, and work actually stopped for
a year in the fall of 1880. The line to Fayetteville was finally
completed in 1882, and for five years the line was owned by the
Duck River Valley Narrow Gauge RR, but was serviced and maintained
by NC&StL.
In 1888, the
NC&StL Ry purchased the entire line from the Duck River Valley
NGRR. In an effort to better service the area, an improvement
project began to convert the entire 48 mile spur from the narrow
gauge track to standard width. Not only would this increase the
capacity of the line, but it would eliminate the need to transfer
the narrow gauge loads onto the standard gauge equipment in
Fayetteville.
By early 1889, 100%
of the line was standardized and was renamed the Columbia spur of
the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railroad. In its heyday,
this line offered two daily round-trip trains from Fayetteville to
Columbia on all days except Sunday. Trains would make the 47.4 mile
journey in as little as 2 hours.
The line continued
operation for more than seventy years, carrying goods and
passengers to and from the heart of Tennessee. This spur was very
successful, but competing technologies would soon cut into the
demand for rail service along this route. In 1945, the line
connecting Columbia to Lewisburg ceased operation and the line was
abandoned. By the end of 1961, the rest of the line from Lewisburg
to Fayetteville would meet the same fate.
What once was the
backbone of this area now has become a faint memory. A few of the
portions of the original track are still in use as spurs in
Columbia and Lewisburg, but the majority of the line was either
converted into rural roadways, or left to be overtaken by the
elements.
