Tracking History: Blue Ridge Railroad buffs uncover mountain mysteries

December 6, 2001 — It didn’t look like a tunnel.

It looked more like a common hill, covered with rocks and leaves and moss. But Rutherford Ellis, who is known as “Ruddy” to other members of the National Railway Historical Society’s Atlanta Chapter, stared at the embankment like a prisoner staring at the cell walls that keep him from the outside world.

What lies behind this particular slope of stone and soil in Rabun County’s Warwoman Dell is Ruddy’s personal version of Al Capone’s vault. Only 72-year-old Ruddy hopes that if he is ever able to excavate this mound of earth, his search would turn up more than Geraldo Rivera’s did.

Ruddy hopes that what’s inside this rise would answer one of the many mysteries found along the recondite route of the ill-fated Blue Ridge Railroad — a project begun and abandoned by the start of the Civil War.

“One of these years,” predicted 77-year-old fellow railroad buff Byron Holton, “Ruddy is either going to get brave enough or foolish enough to bring his post hole diggers out here and dig down into it. Ruddy would give his left arm to get inside that tunnel.”

The U.S. Forest Service likely wouldn’t be too happy if Ruddy did start digging. It owns the land and has asked that Ruddy and his fellow “railroad archaeologists” not disturb it.

“We’ve driven rods down in there hoping to have it break through into the tunnel, but no luck,” Ruddy sighed.

No one knows for sure the contents of Saddle Gap Tunnel — one of five incomplete tunnels along the Blue Ridge’s intended route from Charleston, S.C., to Knoxville, Tenn. No one knows much about several aspects of the Blue Ridge Railroad, constructed in Georgia from 1855 to 1859 with very little documentation.

Some say as many as 41 bodies of immigrant workers are buried inside the tunnel, that a cave-in trapped them there along with their tools, oxen and carts in 1858.

Ruddy and his researchers, all from the Atlanta area, think 41 is a rather high figure for a body count. They estimate it’s likely closer to two or three. But they’d like to be able to find out for sure.

“We haven’t given up and we’re not going to give up,” said Ruddy, who has twice procured the services of scientists equipped with ground-penetrating radar for a peek inside Saddle Gap Tunnel.

“The results were inconclusive,” Ruddy said.

Then he laughed and added, “This is one of the big mysteries that we’re having so much fun trying to solve.”

“There’s another part of it, too,” said 74-year-old Atlanta lawyer Jim Groton, the third of my three companions last week for a tour of the Blue Ridge’s 11 miles of remains in Rabun County. “We just like an excuse to get out in the woods.”

There is a tunnel — more like a long, man-made cave, I suppose — that you can actually walk inside along the Georgia portion of the project. Dick’s Creek Tunnel is one of the 28 items of interest, some subtle and some spectacular, that Ruddy, Jim and Byron mention and map out in their “Rabun County Blue Ridge Railroad Auto and Field Tour” guidebook, which they hope to have printed for public consumption soon.

“We think we know as much about the construction of it as anybody,” Ruddy said. “And we’re continuing to add to that. As much as we have time.”

The Blue Ridge bunch has scoured old newspaper clippings, land deeds and stockholder reports. They have conducted several interviews. But most importantly — and, perhaps, enjoyably — they have traversed every foot of the railway’s planned path through Georgia.

Several portions of that 11-mile route are on private property.

“Any interesting encounters with landowners?” I asked.

“Yes,” Ruddy replied. “One guy had a gun.”

“But,” Jim added, “when Ruddy, with his NRHS hat, walks in bespectacled and starts talking about railways, it automatically disarms everyone.”

Ruddy, in his green Chevy Blazer with National Railway Historical Society signs stuck to the two front doors, was driver for our tour. He made several sudden stops and often drifted toward the side of the road when pointing out items of interest. He is quite enthusiastic.

And I saw why.

I stared stupefied at a bridge abutment, 28 feet tall, near the banks of Warwoman Creek. The large stones were perfectly cut, perfectly placed together. One problem: the would-be bridge doesn’t appear to line up with the railway grading on the other side of the creek.

“That’s when they abandoned the railroad,” Byron joked.

Roughly 60 percent of the railroad was complete when the city of Charleston pulled out of the project, which was put together on a piecemeal basis. The work of several subcontractors dots the rail’s run. But the dots were never connected.

There’s an abutment here, a culvert there, and five partial tunnels. They serve as enigmatic monuments for the 2,000 or so laborers thought to have toiled on the Blue Ridge Railroad in Georgia.

“They were building a first-class railroad,” Ruddy said. “And all the work they were doing … was all by mule carts and pickin’ shovels. The stone work is unbelievable.”

So are the stones themselves. We walked past large ridges of rubble — called spoil in rail speak — on our woodsy walk to the east portal of Dick’s Creek Tunnel, which I had to duck to enter. The “tunnel” travels just 59 feet into the side of Wall Mountain.

A waterfall trickles in front of the opening. The mud inside is like quicksand.

The west portal of Dick’s Creek Tunnel is more accessible. It’s located on private property, but Ruddy and the rest are regulars there. The tunnel is 1,390-feet complete, although you need a boat to see most of it. It’s flooded.

Disney used the tunnel’s grand entrance, naturally covered with moss and decorated with long drill holes, in the filming of its 1977 film “The Million Dollar Dixie Deliverance.”

Only a train from Hollywood could travel a railway that never had any rails.

“Despite many attempts, they never were able to get going again after the Civil War,” said Ruddy, adding that the city of Clayton would have been a “railroad center” if the Blue Ridge line was ever completed.

Perhaps the most famous attempt, in the late 1800s, was likely no more than Albert E. Boone’s bluster. Boone, the self-proclaimed “Railway Pathfinder,” dubbed his plan the Black Diamond Railroad.

“As far as we know, they never did a lick of work,” Ruddy said. Still, to this day, many in Rabun County refer to the Blue Ridge as the Black Diamond.

Add that to the long track of mysteries this railway has left behind.

If you would like to learn how you can explore the Blue Ridge Railroad, or if you have information to share about the railway, call Ruddy Ellis at (404) 237-6757.