No other aspect of tourism industry was so tied to a current television trend as the craze for everything Western in the late 1950's and early 1960's. From the "real" West, where parks such a Knott's Berry Farm in Los Angeles and Frontier City in Oklahoma City entertained with their versions of cowboy culture, to such unlikely locales as Pennsylvania, New York, and Florida, Western parks were as much a staple of the roadside scene as motels, restaurants, service stations, and Stuckey's. The Trend came early to the southern mountains, although its arrival originally had nothing to do with Marshal Dillon or Wyatt Earp.

As long ago as 1881, a railroad line had been built across the rugged mountain country between Johnson City, Tennessee, and Boone, North Carolina. The Steam Locomotive that plied the route became nicknamed Tweetsie because of its distinctive high pitched whistle. Tourism was not the main purpose of the railroad, although it did serve to bring a few hardy souls into that isolated countryside. Tweetsie originally hauled iron ore and timber over its sixty six mile route.

As the official history reports, impovements to the highway system made such small railroads obsolete for the purpose, and Tweetsie was already on its way downhill when a 1940 flood washed away much of the track. What was left of it continued to serve until 1950,when the railroad shut down for good. The next several years saw various interested parties fighting over Tweetsie's iron horse corpse. For a while, the engine spent time in Harrisonburg, Virginia, as the centerpiece of an attraction known as the Shenandoah Central Railroad. Then , Singing cowboy Gene Autry came riding out of the sunset and offered to buy the locomotive to use in his California-based films, but even the fortunes he had amassed in the saddle were not enough to offset the costs of transporting a full-size engine from the Carolina hills to the movie capital.

Grover Robbins, the developer behind the Blowing Rock attraction had three sons. Grover Jr.,Spencer, and Harry, obviously inherited their pa's knack for promotion, because in 1956, Grover Jr. bought Tweetsie's option from Gene Autry for 17,000 with the intention of moving it back to its proper neighborhood and building and attraction around it. Spencer Robbins vividly remembered the day his older brother called him to break the news about his locomotive-sized acquisition: "Our dad is going to think I've lost my mind, Grover Jr. fretted. Sane idea or not, Tweetsie's new home would be on a piece of property between Boone and Blowing Rock, and the new Tweetsie Railroad park opened on July 4th, 1957.

In the Beginning, the only thing to do a Tweetsie was to ride the historic trane out to a picnic area and back. Since only a portion of track had been installed, the train had to travel backward to return its passengers to the entrance. Maybe that means they did not know if they were going or coming. Anyway, shortly thereafter, the track was completed around the base of Roundhouse Mountain, and Tweetsie was able to make its run without using the rearview mirror.

The Trip still didn's boast much excitement, but that soon changed thanks to that glassy-eyed living room haint known as television. TV stations across the country began pulling in top ratings and hefty advertising revenues with their own children's programming. These shows usually fell roughly into the categories of cowboys, sea captains, clowns and cartoons, and WBTV in Charlotte N.C. opted for the first of those four classifications. Fred Kirby had already enjoyed a successful career as a songwriter and sometime movie cowboy when WBTV gave him his own spread, known variously as Junior Rancho, The Little Rascals Club, and Cartoon Corral.

In some unspecified year, but probably around 1958, WBTV used the new Tweetsie park to throw a birthday party for their resident cowpoke. To spice things up, actors from the nearby Horn in the West drama were recruited to suit up as renegade Indians and ornery owlhoots and attack the train during Kirby's trip with his fans. White hatted good guy that he was, Kirby fought off the sidewinders and saved the day and possibly saved Tweetsie too. It is uncertain just how aware Grover Robbins was of the emerging Western park craze in the rest of the country, but his railroad soon became the home of Tweetsie Junction, complete with general store, saloon with kicking can-can girls, territorial bank, and the works.

Unlike most similar parks, one thing Tweetsie did not have was a periodic shootout in the street between the marshal and the bad guys. Instead, that sort of business was left to take place along the train ride itself, where Indians and robbers made every trip a perilous one. Fred Kirby returned to Tweetsie year after year, mostly during the busy summer tourist season, to serve as honorary sheriff and teach them thar varmints a thing or two about law and order, by gum.

While the railroad encircled Roundhouse Mountain, the space on top of that summit seemed to be going to waste. Breaking from the Western theme, the Robbins family installed amusement rides on top of pinnacle, renamed it Magic Mountain, and begain running a chairlift to the top. When Families arrived at the peak, they found themselves in the Castle of the Sleeping Giant, a medieval fortress that was most imposing. If they wanted to impose on their host, they could climb up to the second floor and see the snoring behemoth himself. The Sleeping Giant proved to be the first collaboration between the Robbins family and Jack Pentes, who was the creative force behind the Wizard of Oz them park. The Sleeping Giant display contained ample evidence of Pentes's sense of humor: he decorated the walls with such touches as an advertising calendar from "jack & Company., Dealers in Beanstalks, " with "Phone Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum."

Pentes's next project for Tweetsie outdid even his oversized sleeper, although it went in the opposite direction as far as size was concerned. In the 1970's, a miniature train was added to the Magic Mountain mix, and to give it some variety, Pentes came up with a whole storyline revolving around his "Mouse Mine No. 9" The train entered a long tunnel with walls decorated to resemble Swiss cheese, and there before riders' eyes was a fluorescent tableau of cartoony rodents engaged in every sort of mining activity. the Display was a terrific example of Pentes's talents as a store windo designer and continues to delight today's children, even though they're supposed to be too sophisticated for such simple sights. The Sleeping Giant, for his part, did not survive - but not because of Jack or other giant killers. Being made of papier-mache', the old snorer was just not built to survive in such an inhospitable environment. His former castle is now and open-air station for the skylift, and no one seems to miss his somnambulant presence.

Meanwhile, back down in Tweetsie Junction, things went along pretty much as they always had. That is , until the dark days of the 1970's when tourism as a whole took a hit it had not experienced since World War II. Rising fuel costs had already done their part to siphon the flow of tourists who were out for joy rides, and when gas rationing caused service stations to close on Sundays, everyone in the tourists business felt it. As Spencer Robbins said, "In the beginning, if we h ad two thousand people on Sunday. Well, after the closing of the service stations, that trend reversed. If we had two thousand people on Saturday we'd have only one thousand on Sunday - and it has never gone back. To this day, Sunday is always is always just half of what Saturday was."

More troubles reared their ugly heads after the dawn of the twenty-first century. When the Robbins family first acquired the property for their attraction, they did so under a fifty year lease. This would seem to be plenty, since as they explain, in 1957 the assumption was that in fifty years people would be flying about in spaceships and no one would care about an antique train. However, as they end of the lease approached in 2007, the family was caught in the predicament of having a legend in southern tourism sitting on land that had greatly increased in value. Several landowners were licking their chops at the prospect of selling that parcel for a shopping center or housing development, putting the railroad out to pasture. So far so good on the Tweetsie situation and today it is making its three mile circle from May 1st till its anual Halloween Train in October.

Tweetsie today consists of a cool petting zoo on Magic Mountain along with a few restored vintage rides on top of the mountain. In between the top of the mountain and Tweetsie Junction below, operates a vintage shooting gallery that is really cool and a race way made up of Vintage Gasoline powered 1950's go carts , tail fins included.

Portions of the above description can be found in the book : The Land of the Smokies Great Mountain Memories by Tim Hollis

There are four clickable movies below that you can download and actually see the Train operate and hear it's famous horn.

"!!! www.antiquevending.com : info@antiquevending.com : phone 828-962-9783 : "

SALES AND RESTORATION OF ALL BRANDS AND MODELS OF VINTAGE SODA MACHINES -

"sell the best and service the rest"