Otto, North Carolina

I just found this southbound view of the depot at Otto, North Carolina, on the Macon County Historical Society page. The depot is in the distance on the right. On the left is Jim Porter's sawmill operation, which was logging off the land owned by W. M. Ritter using a 3.0' gauge railroad run by Andrew Gennett. The presence of the sawmill places this photo sometime around 1917.

In the awesome book Logging Railroads of the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains: Vol 2. Harvey Bell of Otto was quoted as saying "the narrow gauge dinky tracks ran up Coweeta Creek for three miles to a camp on Ball Creek". Perhaps most amazing, the narrow gauge line is shown in the same book as ending on the eastern edge of the sawmill you can see in the photo, then a mile or so north of Otto it actually crossed over the Tallulah Falls "on an overhead bridge at a deep cut" and headed west to follow Coweeta Creek up the mountain.

This is the first photo I have ever seen of the TFRR in Otto!