ABSTRACT
September 27, 1903, dawned bright and clear in the Blue Ridge Mountain cotton mill town of Danville, Virginia. It was a warm, Indian summer Sunday, and on nearby White Oak Mountain the maples were turning to their fall colors. It was a lazy morning, and many of the millworkers were sitting on their porches or doing chores around the house. Coming into the town from the north were the tracks of the Southern Railway, which ran down the mountain, over a wooden bridge called Stillhouse Trestle, across the Dan River, and on through Danville to North Carolina and eventually Atlanta. For over a year now, the residents had gotten used to a new fast mail train that ran the route, a train called Old 97. This morning, some of the people were glancing at their pocket watches, and wondering why Old 97 was late.
