Bureau of the Census defined a city as a settlement of more than , resi-
dents—a modest measure of the urban, indeed, yet one that still described
relatively few southern rail towns. These remained towns or villages, then,
but their enormous number and persistent growth indicates that while the
region as a whole remained far from urban, by whatever measure, it was
becoming, after , somewhat less a rural South and much more a South
of villages.
Railroads made money for themselves and for old and new villages lucky
enough to have depots. Luray, Virginia—a tiny settlement on the Shenan-
doah side of the Blue Ridge range—grew suddenly rich, as historian Edward
Ayers puts it, because of ‘‘a hole in the ground.’’^10 Luray Caverns were dis-
covered (or rediscovered) in and became a successful business three
years later, when a railroad company came through. The company built a
large Tudor-style hotel and an electric dynamo to generate lighting in the
majestic caverns. (Luray became another ‘‘first in the world’’ on this ac-
count.) By , trains brought ,-odd visitors to Luray each month,
and according to the local newspaper, they came from twenty-five states,
Europe, and South America. A couple years later, a Luray merchant figured
that stores’ sales were tenfold greater than in . Oddly, the depot, dy-
namo, hole in the ground, and hotel led to diversified growth of Luray’s
economy, too. By there were also a flour mill and two factories making
furniture and cigars.
Rail-powered tourism created other boom villages, too. Blowing Rock,
in the North Carolina mountains, got its grand hotel in , and its sum-
mer population often tripled, with vacationers eager for rest and recreation
in cooler air. Not far away, Asheville, upland Carolina’s principal urban
place, also became established as a summer tourist destination as well as
a luxurious recuperative center for the ailing. Unpredictably, even the for-
lorn piney-woods South developed resorts offering tennis, golf, dubiously
healthful waters, and clinics. By the early s Thomasville, Georgia (of
all places), had four big hotels for the trade. The little city left no visitor
unimpressed, either, since Thomasville was fully wired for telephone ser-
vice and its water was heated by steam. Jacksonville, Florida, allegedly the
ugly stepsister to St. Augustine in terms of touristic interest, actually flour-
ished around the turn of the century as a winter and spring destination
where bathing, sports, and especially music and dancing attracted throngs
of happy northerners.
Then there were the miraculous new towns-cum-cities, the best-known
blown into being by the combination of rails and extractive industries. Con-