Still suffering the devastation of the Civil war that ended only ten years earlier, North Carolina shipped prison inmates from Raleigh to build the Mountain Division of the western North Carolina railroad. Some amazing and astonishing events occurred from 1875 through 1879 as this mountain railroad (3 miles straight-line distance, requiring 9+ miles of track) was pushed up the eastern continental divide.
Six tunnels were excavated, from 89 to 1,800 feet long, each 15 feet tall. For open cuts, solid rock was cracked by dousing cold mountain water on roaring fires. The first use in the southeastern U.S. of a new product called Nobel's Blasting Oil (now called nitroglycerin!) was on the project. It was mixed with sawdust and corn meal, making nitroglycerin mash.

A very heavy wood-burning locomotive was picked up off the tracks by the convicts and pushed several miles overland to the top of the mountain to help dig out the longest tunnel. The most common tool used was a flat rock held in the strong hands of the convicts to dig and spread dirt as they prepared the flat path needed to lay crossties for the rails.

Tunnels, Nitro and Convicts condenses the incredible history of the most ambitious earth-moving, mountain-conquering project in the United States as of the 1870s into an engaging, easy-to-read story. The fascinating and compelling intertwining of long dark caves, blasting and cracking of massive rocks, the first use of nitroglycerin in the southeastern United States, and pushing a big locomotive several miles through the woods up a mountain ... all by hundreds of convicts who worked under severe conditions with the most basic tools ... makes this true account of post-civil war railroad history a story you must read!