. . . by a photo in the October TRAINS (NS cover story). The pic shows a train near “Jasper, Virginia, in the heart of Southwestern Virginia,” a near quote anyway.
I’ve never heard of Jasper, Virginia. While my knowledge is not encyclo-pedic, I have been over most of SW Virginia. My road atlas lists no Jasper, Virginia (nor a Jasper in the southern part of West Virginia, a common confusion.) [B)]
In fact, the Commonwealth of Virginia’s own free road map, latest edition, shows no Jasper. What makes this particularly intriguing to me is it looks as though the picture could have been made on the old Southern Rwy line from Big Stone Gap to points west. (That’s the line with the natural tunnel.) [:p]
Perhaps there is a vestigial “Jasper, Virginia” that has now become a ghost town or gone to ruin–except for the RR sign near whistle board?
I’m curious to see what y’all can tell me. There’s got to be an answer out there without making a capital case of it with TRAINS–because it is a pretty trivial mistake, if indeed it is a mistake.
[8D]
Sure wish I’d held onto my 1968 Official Guide to the Railways…
I have a 1969 Official Guide, and it show a Jasper, West Virginia served by the Chesapeake & Ohio, but I don’t see a Virginia. Also listed are Jaspers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ontario, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas.
To make things more confusing, I did a google search and came up with a Jasper, Virginia, but not one in West Virginia. http://www.placesnamed.com/j/a/jasper.asp It even lists the latitude and longitude, so if you put those numbers into http://maps.google.com it will show you exactly where it is.
Thank you all so much. There is indeed a Jasper, Virginia, on U.S. Route 23 in Lee County, and it is about halfway between Big Stone Gap and Kingsport (or Bristol). This is about as Southwestern Virginia as it gets.
Since I actually drove that hwy now and again in the late seventies, either Jasper has grown or (more likely) it is and was one of those coal-related villages on the RR, with the highway literally being the high road (above the fray).
Jasper’s neighbors are Harvey to the north and Tito to the south. Not at all urban, but it is a very pretty area. I do think that RR route is the one with the natural tunnel, but am not absolutely sure about that.
With this thread, Bardwell, WI came to mind. It is not found on any official Wisconsin highway map or in the Rand-McNally Atlas, but MapQuest shows it at their site. Bardwell is just a little east of Darien, WI. Formerly the crossing of the MILW Chicago-Janesville and Racine-Beliot (and beyond) line, it is now a station or more like a control point on the WSOR. WSOR operates the line from Janesville to Fox Lake (thence Metra) and all that remains of the line to Racines is just a branch to Elkhorn. I don’t know if Bardwell was ever anything more than a railroad point. There are no homes close to the junction now and no real sign of any past housing or cluster of buildings that would have made it a village.
I suspects that there are many railroad “stations” throughout the US that are now only a railroad point and never had any more development than railroad owned buildings.