Blacksburg: Iron Boom on the Air Line

The community was simply known as the area where the Black family farmed until John G. Black convinced a railroad company to build its tracks through his land in the eighteen seventies. The depot was called Black's Station, and in eighteen eighty-eight the settlement, incorporated earlier as Black's Station, took the name Blacksburg.

The railroad opened the area to trade, and then in the eighteen nineties something larger arrived: iron ore. Large deposits of iron were found in the surrounding hills, and Blacksburg briefly became a boom town, with hotels and saloons crowding in for the new arrivals. Cherokee County was carved out of three surrounding counties in eighteen ninety-seven, partly because Blacksburg and nearby Gaffney had enough population and commerce to justify their own county government.

The iron economy faded, but Blacksburg held on as the quiet northern anchor of a county that bears the name of the people who once called these Cherokee foothills home.