Some Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part IV

by Glenn N. Holliman

This is the fourth in a series of articles on Damascus, Virginia and how one family, my great uncle and aunt, Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright, lived and contributed to the well-being of the community in the first half of the 20th Century.
  
In 1901 the Virginia-Carolina Railroad reached Damascus from Abington, Virginia.  Timber began being removed from the thick forests surrounding the cove and covering the high mountains that surrounded the isolated village.  In 1906, the Laurel Line opened to the south connecting Damascus to Mountain City,Tennessee.

Historian Louise Hall describes the Laurel Railway as a narrow gauge operation that often carried young people into the forests for picnics and then picked them up to bring them home.  Below are some photos illustrating Ms. Hall's information.

The names of the persons on this small track car are not known, but one assumes Dave Wright in on the far right and probably his young wife, Pearl Osborne Wright, is sitting in front of him.  If relatives recognize unidentified persons in this and other photographs, please email the writer at Glennhistory@gmail.com. 

As ever we are indebted for the photographs to my second cousin, Phyllis Ackers Mink, whose mother, Doris Osborne Ackers, grew up in Damascus from 1923 until her marriage to Elmer "Flea" Ackers in the 1930s.  Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright may be the couple (right picture) on the far right side of the person in the dark jacket.  The man in the dark coat may be Dave's brother, Ward Wright, who also lived in Damascus.


Railroads served Damascus until 1926 when operations ceased as the timber had been harvested.  Economically the trains could not survive with out the trees.  Later many of the privately owned forests were purchased by the U.S. Government and have become national forests.  This is another story, one of the Civilian Conservation Corps locating a camp near Damascus during the New Deal.  The CCC location would impact the lives of the Wrights and Osborne siblings.