June 1989

Doe River Gorge Wildlife

On a light-hearted note, here's another one of the denizens of the gorge. I saw a good many of these colorful centipedes. The climate in the gorge must be like a rainforest, everything is so lush and green, with lots of little critters running around. You'll also notice most of the ballast rocks are black or dark gray. They're iron ore tailings from the Cranberry Mine, remnants of the iron mining process. Most of the ET&WNC line was ballasted with this surplus rock. It's magnetic, so a compass is practically useless along the right-of-way.