Cass Scenic Railroad State Park

 Cass use to be a logging town where its citizens mostly worked either at the saw mill or on the railroad during the early 1900s.  We did not do our homework in planning our visit to this park, but with only 3 days to see the sights of this part of West Virginia, we were not very upset in missing all that Cass had to offer us.  As we always tell each other, we will cover that when we come back to West Virginia.

In the background of the picture is the town's lumber warehouse.  It is now a theater with a film on the town as well as a diorama depicting the the town of Cass when it was a booming logging community.  The film was just starting to run and we thought we would go in to see it, but the man welcoming us into the building was not wearing his mask.  We chose to not enter the building.  This park has an authentic operating museum of lumber railroading.  It moved in 7 steam-driven locomotives from around the states which were all made in the early 1900s to move heavy freight as coal and lumber.  They were also built for going over steep grades and sharp curves.  The park offers an 11 mile train ride from the station in Cass- unfortunately there is only one train leaving per day and reservations need to be made ahead of time.  That left us out.

There are guided tours of the town, as we came into Cass the last tour was occurring, so we missed out on that too.  However, there were interpretive signs in front of some of the structures which gave us a bit of an idea of its citizenry when the town the was a bustling lumbering town.  The home above was "Piney" William's home, he and his wife lived there from 1902-1942.  They wife raised 6 children in that house.  Piney had the reputation of taking more logs off Black Mountain than any other engineer on the logging railroad.

 

Part of the company store is now a museum of the town's history and artifacts.  Cass park was rife with tourists while we were there so we did not linger long inside any buildings.  Gift shops had large bottles of hand sanitizer available to be used by everyone coming inside; shopkeepers watched that very closely, also they saw to it that masks were on.  Apparently West Virginia has seen an increase of coronal virus cases recently.  Anxious to be away from crowds we hiked on a trail which ran alongside the railroad.  A man coming off the trail informed us that he had seen a bear cub crossing the trail ahead of him. We never saw the bear, but did espy this beautiful wildflower, a closed gentian which blooms during the late summer and early fall.  This ends my postings on West Virginia, it was a joy to share it with you our readers!