Last Train to Elkmont: A Look Back at Life on Little River in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Octavo, softbound (slick, photo. illus. pink wrappers), 150 pp. Fine. From lower cover: The lumber camps in East Tennessee's mountains and the delivery of logs to sawmills down swift rivers, were among Vic Weals' chronicles in his 37 years with the Knoxville (Tennessee) Journal. He talked with the families who lived in the camps, cut the timber, drove the horse teams, built switchback railroads up the steep hollows, and operated the mountain goat steam locomotives, cranes, and cableways. These were people who up to then were rarely written about. Weals visited their homes and listened at campgrounds of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park at Elkmont and Tremont, when former loggers returned to the scene of their hard work adventure. Their stories of triumph and sometimes of pain and death in a dangerous calling are the substance of this book. The 140 black and white photographs are a mix of old and recent, many from the author's own camera through the years. The families also shared their pictures, some pulished here for the first time. There are notable views of the Baldwin locomotives designed specially for the Elkmont run, as successful an excursion railroad as it was a timber-hauling enterprise. The dismantling of the Elkmont line late in 1925, detailed in Chapter 17, inspired the book's title. Tennessee, Americana, U.S.-iana, Appalachian, Smoky Mountains. xnxsl.…