Introduction

The turbulence of a wonderful time brought four railroads, several new towns, thousands of new residents, the first newspapers, and an untold number of other businesses to sparsely settled but timber-rich Wayne County.

Development and Growth

It commenced as logging of the county's precious virgin timber (a good part of it pine) gained momentum after the arrival of the first train in 1871, but glimpses of the excitement and the heartache, integral parts of it, have been preserved in the author's recordings of the year-by-year happenings, often in the precise language used by the newspapers of that day to report them.