Erica, Chris, Elise, Janet, Ralph and Mark on one of the Virginia Creeper Trail's Trestle Bridges (one of 47 bridges). The last train ran in 1977.

With humor, local folks referred to the mountain train that climbed eastward into the Iron Mountains as the Virginia Creeper, a name taken from the plant that grew abundantly beside the tracks. A steam engine laboring up mountain grades with heavy loads of lumber, iron ore, supplies, and passengers was also a "creeper" in every sense of the word.

By 1918, when lumber had become a more important resource, the line stretched 75 miles to Elkland, North Carolina, and included more than 100 trestles. Villagers out picking blackberries or elderberries along the tracks watched as stacks of red spruce, freshly cut from virgin forests high atop Mount Rogers, rumbled by on flatbed cars. Although beset by flood damage as well as economic problems associated with the Great Depression, a train ran at least weekly until 1976.

Daniel Boone also camped along the trail, according to early records.