American Tobacco Trail

American Tobacco Trail. . Durham was established in the 1850's when the North Carolina Railroad extended its tracks westward across the state. The new town became the destination for farmers in the area to bring their tobacco crops for sale and transport to the factories., By 1860, Durham consisted of the railway station, a post office, three stores, a carpenter shop, two bars, a tobacco factory, and a few houses. Robert E. Morris had begun to manufacture smoking tobacco here in 1858. In 1860 he sold his factory to John R. Green who started production of "Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco," a brand destined to become the most popular of its kind in the world. In 1869 William T. Blackwell and John R. Day took over the business and expanded the Bull Durham plant into the world's largest tobacco manufacturer. Washington Duke began making cigarettes in 1881 on his small farm in northern Durham; by 1884 he became the first manufacturer to mechanize cigarette production. Mr. Duke helped start cotton mills and machine shops to support his growing business. His son, James B. Duke, formed the American Tobacco Company., Six rail lines came into Durham in the late nineteenth century, bringing tobacco leaf from eastern and southern North Carolina and South Carolina farms to the American Tobacco plants for processing. The last rail line, owned by Norfolk Southern, was constructed in 1905-06. It ran into Durham from Chatham County through what is now the Lake Jordan reservoir. In Wake County, that RR line met the main Florida-bound tracks of the Seaboard Coast line. When Lake Jordan was constructed, the original line was moved east onto higher ground where the route remains today., In the second half of the Twentieth Century, more and more commercial freight was carried by truck rather than by rail car. Interstate highways replaced the railroads, and rail lines were abandoned. When the American Tobacco factory shut down in Durham in 1987, Norfolk Southern began removing track from its rail corridor. Sections of the corridor were sold off; one large parcel became part of I-40., But the corridor was saved by volunteers, local governments, and the State. Today the 23-mile American Tobacco Trail routes through Durham, Wake, and Chatham counties, from downtown Durham at the old American Tobacco factory site to Bonsal in Wake County. It serves bicyclists and pedestrians and, in the southern sections, equestrians as well. A 4-mile section of trail in Wake County is maintained with engines and rolling stock as the New Hope Valley Railway, preserving a piece of railroad history., [Image captions:] , Washington Duke stands at the door of the log barn that was the first Duke tobacco factory. It burned and has been reconstructed., The Durham Bull was known throughout the 1870's and 1880's. The baseball term "bullpen" originated with a painting of the Durham bull in the area where the pitcher warmed up., A steam locomotive passenger train roles at Durham's Union Station. As many as 26 passenger trains per day once stopped here., The tracks of the North Carolina Railroad passed by the front of the Duke Tobacco Factory.