The uphill climb

Now taking the grade is a matter of choice | Mindy Belz

Jim Morrill/Charlotte Observer/Newscom

Off Jeb Stuart Highway a rail bed runs through the Virginia highlands. Follow the highway east and you'll eventually end nearly at the lip of the old Civil War hero's grave. Follow the rail bed and you will climb through forests along some of the most gently beautiful whitewater east of the Mississippi, from lowlands where saltworks, gypsum beds, and lumber mills once supplied nearly the whole of the Confederacy to a 500-acre prairie at 5,500 feet surrounded by timber stands and known as Whitetop.

Today it's the rail bed that holds my interest—miles and miles of abandoned track laid by Norfolk & Western in the 19th century up and over Whitetop Mountain. At its peak in the 1920s, Whitetop was the highest community in the East to have passenger train service. It boasted 500 residents, a hotel, a doctor, a dentist, and two stores in addition to the train depot.