Saluda, North Carolina

Saluda sits at the top of the steepest standard-gauge mainline railroad grade in the United States. The Saluda Grade drops roughly six hundred feet in under three miles down the Blue Ridge escarpment toward Melrose and the South Carolina Piedmont, and for over a century it was one of the most feared stretches of track in the country. Runaway trains on the descent killed crews and destroyed cars with enough frequency that railroad workers dreaded the assignment.

Saluda grew up as a service stop and emergency brake-test station at the top of that grade, established in eighteen seventy-eight when the Spartanburg and Asheville Railroad punched through the Blue Ridge. The last freight train descended the grade in two thousand and one. The town, population under seven hundred, preserves a quiet Main Street of turn-of-the-century storefronts and is a favored stop on the NCDOT Saluda Grade scenic byway.