00:00:00
you're right on the edge of the Smokies you're in country that is just on the verge of being primitive and remote but
00:00:11
it's going rapidly to the tourists to the real estate people in the air is not as pure as it was when
00:00:20
I was a kid when I used to sit on that porch at night with my grandparents and there wasn't a sound
00:00:29
and to sit there in the dark I had no idea at the time that that was Paradise but it was
00:00:36
Gary Cardin has lived in this exact house in the mountains of Western North Carolina for almost his entire life he's
00:00:44
84 years old his grandparents built the house and raised him here I sat with him in the front room he told
00:00:52
me that I was sitting in the same spot where his grandfather's coffin was placed
00:00:57
because he's been here in this small town for so long he knows stories that others have forgotten like what happened
00:01:06
in December of 1882 something the Raleigh news and observer called too horrible to Chronicle without a shutter
00:01:15
I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music] in the late 1800s North Carolina was trying to build a railway system through
00:01:32
the western part of the state they wanted it built quickly they wanted to move coal and Timber and hopefully make
00:01:39
a lot of money but there is no easy way to Tunnel through a mountain you're talking about
00:01:47
manual labor people using picks and and carting the the debris away here's Western Carolina University
00:01:57
archivist and historian George Frizzell they're not going to have the kind of mechanized equipment that people are
00:02:04
used to today we're not talking about heavy machinery earth-moving equipment bulldozers that's the reason the labor
00:02:13
is so strenuous in 1877 the state came up with a plant would both save money and speed
00:02:22
things up and they ran in prisoners to the railroad and the idea of being of course
00:02:32
[Music] you have to feed them six cents a day and you have to keep them put them up
00:02:42
for the night and if one tries to get away you can shoot them and if one dies we'll give you another
00:02:49
one [Music] the presence were turned into a business not far from where Gary Cardin lives a
00:03:02
group of African-American prisoners were leased to the Western North Carolina railroad company they were building a
00:03:09
new rail line in the mountains along the takasiji river they had to manually bore through 700
00:03:16
feet of stone to make a tunnel big enough for a train to pass through it would be called the kawi tunnel
00:03:23
the men were chained to one another while they worked and to get to the tunnel each morning
00:03:30
the men had to get on a boat in their chains to cross the river one morning at the end of December in
00:03:38
1882 it had been snowing and raining heavily the river was very high but the guards instructed the prisoners to board
00:03:46
the boat and they started to cross the river okay the bottom of that flat bottom boat is
00:03:52
full of slush it's water icicles so just a mix and it's you know a couple inches
00:04:00
deep because it's been snowing all night and as they go that slush goes to the front of the boat and then
00:04:11
it comes to the back of the boat and it's just going back and forth they think the boat sinking and that's the
00:04:17
water coming up through the hole and they get up and they said about sinking the boat sinking in the garden said no
00:04:23
it's not sit down sit down and they push the guards to the back of the boat and when they're all on the back of the boat
00:04:29
capsizes [Music] and into the river they go and of course it's freezing cold but because they were chained together
00:04:41
you know because I'm chaining to you when I go I'm gonna bring you and you'll bring the next one because
00:04:49
you're chained to them and it's just and all 19 of them went into the river [Music]
00:04:59
there were people on the the shore that said that it's the most pitiful site that every Witnesses when they're that
00:05:08
forced their head above the water and then call for help and they said they heard them call for wives
00:05:16
for mother for God for everything and then it got very quiet one local paper wrote it was one of
00:05:26
those accidents that seemed unavoidable due to the sudden Panic which sees the convicts in the boat
00:05:33
the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the convicts were drowned by clasping each other like knots of serpents and
00:05:41
swept down to the lower Rapids below which they were found by twos and threes tightly clasped together in their death
00:05:49
Lock 19 bodies were pulled from the takasiji river so they loaded a sled and people who saw
00:05:58
them lay the dead in the sled so it's pretty much like a load loading cord wood put them all in that sled and pulled it
00:06:08
up the top of the hill and they dug those three trenches and then they just kicked them in there there was no
00:06:13
ceremony in nothing the youngest was 15 years old the oldest was 52. Gary says the 19 bodies were dumped in
00:06:23
unmarked Graves and forgotten what bothers him is that it's likely that the men wouldn't have died if they hadn't
00:06:31
been chained together why did they have the shackles and change them kind of well the railroad says that's
00:06:38
because they're dangerous men well those dangerous men were charged with misdemeanors every one of them they were
00:06:45
there because they committed crimes like they walked on the highway after Dark you know or they were found gambling or
00:06:54
they found them behind the store with two other guys drinking it was not a serious criminal in the
00:07:01
whole crowd after the Civil War the so-called Black Codes were passed across the South
00:07:08
laws designed to control newly freed enslaved people these laws made it easy to arrest black
00:07:15
men and women and charge them with felonies for misdemeanor crimes they could serve five-year prison terms
00:07:22
for minor offenses like stealing a pig or a chicken worth a dollar vacancy statutes made it a crime to be
00:07:31
unemployed standing on the street became loitering and walking at night became breaking
00:07:37
curfew s were called the black code and when a little research is done you find out they're just Reinventing
00:07:48
slavery it has a different name it has a sanction of the government but it's uh actually an immoral unethical practice
00:08:03
in 1870 the prison population in North Carolina was 121 by 1890 that number had grown to 1 302.
00:08:14
the state didn't have the resources to manage the incredible influx of prisoners
00:08:20
one prison official asked the legislature to just let some of these men go but instead the state put them to work
00:08:28
on the railroad it was called convict Leasing and it happened all over the South
00:08:34
the 13th amendment abolished slavery in 1865. but the amendment left an exception
00:08:41
slavery shall not exist except as punishment for crime instead of being sent to prison people
00:08:48
convicted of crimes could be leased to businessmen plantation owners and corporations
00:08:55
professor Matthew Mancini writes about the history of convict leasing in his book one dies yet another
00:09:02
he writes that more than 90 of the convicts were black and describes the least system as one of the harshest and
00:09:10
most exploitative labor systems known in American history from 1877 to 1891 more than half of
00:09:18
North Carolina's prisoner population was working on the railway they sometimes committed suicide they
00:09:24
were so miserable I would work until they defended and they they knew what they could do if
00:09:31
they just couldn't take it anymore you just dropped your hammer and started walking away and the guard
00:09:38
would shoot you and there were there's even a story I don't know whether it's true about two
00:09:44
brothers who just looked at each other and says he ready James yeah I'm ready let's go and
00:09:49
they dropped their Hammers and walked until they were shot the railroad company's promise quote
00:09:56
very comfortable quarters meals and clothing conditions were incredibly harsh one local reporter who visited the
00:10:06
living quarters wrote that the prisoners were driven into a row of prison cars where they were tightly boxed for the
00:10:12
night with no possible chance to obtain either air or light and that the conditions in the camps
00:10:20
were squalid and horrifying after the Cowie tunnel disaster the Western North Carolina Railroad Company
00:10:29
went back to work new prisoners were brought in and construction of the tunnel was completed
00:10:36
Gary Cardin says he grew up hearing the story as a sort of Legend a ghost story about dangerous felons
00:10:44
that's the way a lot of people in Jackson County talk about it well if you drive through the once you go down to
00:10:52
Dillsboro and they've got this tourist trap little town down here they have a train and it's called the
00:10:59
Smoky Mountain train and of course it's a tourist trap too and the tourists get on it and ride through the tunnel
00:11:09
well I come through that tunnel and there's always somebody on that train that says you are now coming through
00:11:16
Galilee tunnel 19 men died working on this uh they drowned on the river down there
00:11:25
and they brought them back up here and buried them on top of the tunnel up here and that's their tears falling through
00:11:32
here that you see now as we go through there's a lot of water falling that's the tears of those dead men
00:11:40
foreign [Music] in 1963 the Asheville citizen times published an article called some believe
00:12:04
kawi tunnel there's a curse the article goes on to say death accompanied its building trains have
00:12:13
wrecked in it cave-ins have plagued it from the beginning there are many stories about trains
00:12:19
inexplicably stalling in the kawi tunnel stories about train derailments and of the tunnel caving in and trapping trains
00:12:27
people in Jackson County say they've heard the sounds of pickaxes on Stone clinking chains and splashing water
00:12:36
we learned about the tunnel from a listener his name is Al Fisher he sent us an email saying he'd recently moved
00:12:44
to the area from Georgia and realized he was living right up the mountain from a
00:12:49
train tunnel that people said was haunted we asked Al if we could come visit I said I'd pick him up
00:12:58
we met near a restaurant called the forger's canteen and drove a few miles before he told me to pull over just off
00:13:04
the road so we could start walking so you'll see the the river is down off the side of the road here on the left and
00:13:15
the river runs right along the railroad tracks or the railroad tracks run along the river
00:13:20
and this is the river where the men drowned yes correct he had never been to the tunnel himself
00:13:27
but said he had done some research and he was sure we would be able to find it hard to get to oh boy okay here we go so
00:13:36
I'm gonna take my [Music] okay let me um let me put on my hat okay they have a hat we're really going in
00:13:55
here yeah so if you if you aren't up for this we don't have to no no no no please
00:14:00
please please I didn't know that I mean I guess I shouldn't have assumed that we would that it would be a paved
00:14:07
Road I wasn't prepared to go hiking we made our way down a steep bridge to the railroad tracks below the brush was
00:14:16
dense and it was hot Al seen prepared with a backpack I wouldn't have been surprised if he had
00:14:22
brought a first aid kit an extra water all I had was four extra batteries in my back pocket in case the recorder died
00:14:30
we walked her about a quarter mile down the tracks before we came to the river so now we're kind of coming around a
00:14:37
curve here yeah and we'll this the tracks actually crossed the river right here and then right on the other side of the
00:14:45
river is the tunnel and now we're we're gonna cross the River on the tracks yes and so then you can see the tunnel
00:14:56
that's that's the mouth of the tunnel right there in the curve there but it's kind of dark
00:15:03
well don't don't break your ankle on this thing I'm glad there's not a train coming can you
00:15:09
imagine the Run we'd have to do so we're crossing the river on the train ties which
00:15:18
it seems like the safest thing but so on the other side of the Bridge here the tunnel starts
00:15:30
Okay so we've made it to the other side there's the entrance to the tunnel if we were frightened people we might
00:15:42
think this was a little scary but here we go plowing ahead it looks dark doesn't it
00:15:52
the tunnel looks fairly big enough for a train to pass through it's pretty amazing that it was dug by hand well
00:15:58
here we go into the tunnel the minute you go inside the temperature drops you can feel it
00:16:06
the light from the opening stays with you for the first 50 feet or so and then it starts to get dark gosh
00:16:18
and I ask you will you hold that light light wow it's getting dark very quickly in here
00:16:30
um but it's amazing to look at the rock that you can see oh it's kind of wild um that they've really chiseled this
00:16:41
rock out yeah it's pretty amazing and now we're kind of so we can still see the light behind us
00:16:50
but that will go away so if a train were to come right now we just get along the side of the wall I
00:16:56
guess after a couple hundred feet the tunnel begins to curve and all the light disappears
00:17:06
we stopped Al turned off the small flashlight he was carrying it was Pitch Black and the
00:17:13
sound of the dripping water came from all around I asked him to turn the light back on it
00:17:19
shown like a spotlight on the rough ceiling of the tunnel above us you can see all these small dents in the
00:17:25
Stone I wondered if they were created by the men who had been forced to work here
00:17:30
every day I wondered if maybe the story is is more it's the mountain crying to remind us what happened here
00:17:41
[Music] foreign just a reminder of the past that was forgotten for a long time forgotten for a long time
00:17:55
and there's the daylight again [Music] today the Cowie tunnel disaster lives on for people riding the Taurus train
00:18:07
and for those who love to tell ghost stories they're folk songs but what happened
00:18:13
but Gary Cardin says that's not good enough we owe those 19 men more than that he wants to find other ways for
00:18:22
people to remember what really happened he's been researching the incident and with the help of various Scholars he now
00:18:29
has a list of the names and ages of the 19 men who died if I had my way you would bring those bodies out of there
00:18:37
and you would re-enter them in a grave in Dillsboro and there would be a little Museum there the history of what
00:18:46
happened to those 19 men it's unlikely that the bodies will be disinterred and given a proper burial in
00:18:54
part because there's confusion about exactly where they are there has been talk of putting a plaque
00:19:01
near the tunnel but Gary doesn't think anyone will hike out to the woods to look at a plaque and
00:19:07
having been in those woods I have to agree he wants something in town something the
00:19:13
people of Jackson County will see and talk about the best memorials he says are conversations
00:19:21
[Music] thank you [Music] criminalists created by Lauren Spore and me media Wilson is our senior producer
00:19:39
Susanna Roberson is our assistant producer audiomix by Rob Byers special thanks to Wilson Sayer Julian Alexander
00:19:47
makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see them at this criminal.com where on Facebook and
00:19:54
Twitter at criminal show criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina public radio wunc we're a
00:20:02
proud member of radiotopia from PRX a collection of the best podcasts around I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal
00:20:12
[Music] s