Mountain brawl: Why Nantahala center is suing Great Smoky Mountains Railroad
On its website, the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad offers a bucolic portrait of commercial symbiosis in the Western North Carolina highlands — a raft of paddlers on a whitewater river raising their hands in friendly greeting as the railroad’s engines and cars chug by.
For decades, the railroad and the Nantahala Outdoor Center have shared the economic bounty from the Nantahala River Gorge in Swain County, both drawing thousands of visitors to the far western sliver of the state for either a float down foaming rapids or a winding rail ride above and beside them.
But now the longtime neighbors — two of the most enduring brands in the state’s mountain tourism economy — have become embroiled in an acrimonious and highly public dispute that would earn an approving nod from the Hatfields and McCoys.
The standoff, which recently surfaced in federal court, has ensnared the federal, state and local governments as well as utility and land-owning giants Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority — just as the summer tourism season in the mountains slips into its highest gear.
On paper, the debate focuses on safety, and a few small parcels of land the companies peacefully have shared: three railroad crossings on outdoor center property; a fourth that the center used to reach nearby Fontana Lake; and a final one where the world-famous Appalachian Trail cuts across both the center property and the railroad tracks.
But what appears to have started as a disagreement over how to make the crossings safer has escalated into an angry court complaint teeming with charges and counter charges of vandalism, trespassing, extortion and illegal land grabs that flop around like hooked trout. Demands for tens of thousands of dollars in daily penalties now ride on the outcome.
The Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, based in Bryson City, did not respond to an Observer request for comment. Nor did the company’s attorney, Robert Carpenter of Asheville.
Last year, Kim Albritton, the company’s vice president and general manager, put the blame on the outdoor center, which she claims makes the gorge unsafe.
“NOC and its employees commonly park vehicles on the tracks, permit rafters to crawl under trains, allow employees to travel by bicycle and foot on the train tracks, all of which constitute a crime in North Carolina,” Albritton told Asheville TV station WLOS.
“Numerous failed attempts to work with the NOC have placed the GSMR in a position to unilaterally take necessary safety measures to protect the GSMR, its employees and passengers.”
Albritton’s safety beefs with the railroad’s neighbor appears to date back to at least 2017, when one of her trains struck a bus carrying ninth-graders from Georgia Military Academy as it was crossing the tracks to reach the outdoor center. Six students and two teachers were injured. The bus driver was arrested.
Rail crossings closed, ripped up
The NOC, as it is widely known, has been operating in the gorge since the early 1970s and has expanded to become Swain County’s largest private employer. On summer weekends, the Nantahala River runs bumper to bumper with rafts, kayaks and canoes. Cars jam the adjoining highway or pull over by the dozens to gape at the passing whitewater parade.
The Great Smoky Mountains Railroad is part of the show. It first leased its 52-mile line in 1988 then bought it outright eight years later. One of its two routes out of Bryson City includes a stop at the NOC.
Economic co-dependence aside, relations between the two turned as frigid as the river that runs between them in late 2019. That’s when the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad “demanded” that the NOC sign a new agreement over the center’s access to the five crossings, according to the NOC’s federal lawsuit.
There were no negotiations, the lawsuit claims, only an ultimatum. Unless the NOC paid what its lawyers describe as an “exorbitant annual fee” and accepted the railroad’s other unfair terms, the railroad would close and perhaps destroy the crossings. In its lawsuit, the NOC describes it as extortion.
On July 14, 2020, at the height of both the summer tourist season and the worldwide pandemic, the railroad made good on the first part of its threat by closing off the Fontana Lake crossing. The move not only blocked a public road, it sealed off the NOC and its customers from one of the area’s major natural attractions — and a major source of revenue for the center.
TVA, which had donated the railroad crossing, was now cut off from property it owns around the massive lake.
A week later and with one day’s notice, the railroad company closed and ripped out what is known as the West Hellards crossing, blocking another pubic road and cutting off about 60 NOC employees from their homes, forcing them to park along heavily trafficked U.S. 19, the lawsuit claims. Some of the workers living on the site at the time were in quarantine after being exposed to COVID-19, according to the complaint.
Within days, according to the lawsuit, the railroad threatened to close and destroy the crossing into what is known as the center’s East Hellards tract, home to about 40 NOC employees. The railroad backed off temporarily when it learned that the crossing rests on federal land, but it has resumed the threats of closure, the complaint claims.
Meanwhile, the railroad’s “mercurial and erratic” manner has continued. Its employees have placed “no trespassing” and “no parking” signs on property within the railroad corridor that the NOC says it has used for 50 years, the lawsuit alleges.
The railroad has also dragged boulders into NOC parking areas while falsely accusing NOC employees of vandalism and sabotage, threatening them with prosecution and jail for “basic operations on areas that are unquestionably a part of the NOC’s property,” according to the complaint. Once, the NOC claims, the railroad told Duke Energy to cut off the center’s power without warning.
Now the outdoor center has gone to court, and it wants to be paid.
The outdoor center has asked the federal courts for an order blocking the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad from blocking or damaging the crossings, among other demands. It is also asking for penalties of $10,000 a day since the West Hellards crossing was closed, and $5,000 a day dating back to the closure of the Fontana Lake access. The complaint also asked for additional damages.
Attorney Jason Evans, part of the Charlotte-based defense team for the NOC, did not respond to an Observer request to discuss the dispute.
This story was originally published July 14, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
