The story below is an excerpt from our July/August 2017 issue. For the rest of this story and more like it subscribe today, log in to read our digital edition or download our FREE iOS app. Thank you!
A few tidbits on the Ruby Falls expansion, Tweetsie Railroad milestones and more.
Ruby Falls To Expand
Ruby Falls is bursting at the seams this summer with an expansion project at the iconic Irish Castle tower on Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
“We’re adding 12,000 square feet of space to bring people in and have more of an area to receive and entertain our guests,” says Ruby Falls President Hugh Morrow. “We can’t add on to the cave. The cave is the cave, and we can’t add on the falls. That’s just all natural. Other than the lighting and the music, it hasn’t changed over the years.”
This construction project marks the first phase of a six-part, $20-million plan to improve the buildings and parking area of the classic destination. The additions include a pedestrian mall and enhanced observation of the city at the historic attraction, where the actual Ruby Falls drops 145 feet as the centerpiece of an hour-long cave tour.
“We broke ground in March and hope to be completed in March 2018 with a grand opening sometime in that month,” Morrow says. “We’re increasing our ticketing and retail and common space. The actual building, the Irish Castle tower, nothing is going to happen to it. We’re going to attach this building to it, to the back of the building. The only thing that’s going to change is removing some old wooden decks. And it just gives everyone a lot more space to move around.”
rubyfalls.com; 423-821-2544
Bristol Sessions Marks 90 Years
It’s been a lifetime since talent scout Ralph Peer set up microphones in an old warehouse in Bristol, Tennessee, looking for “hillbilly” singers. This polished New Yorker spent July-August 1927 in this railroad town on the Virginia-Tennessee border and wrapped up his now-famous “Bristol Session” by discovering two of country music’s greatest early acts.
First came The Carter Family, full of homespun melodies and songs about love and faith, giving country music its soul as well as Maybelle Carter’s widely-imitated chicken-scratch guitar. Also at the microphones: Jimmie Rodgers, a wild-living yodeler who provided country music its honky-tonk edge.
This year, Bristol celebrates the 90th anniversary of the Bristol Sessions during the annual Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion, held Sept. 15-17, with performers including Dwight Yoakam, Jerry Douglas, The Cactus Blossoms, Folk Soul Revival and the Lonesome River Band. The dozens of other acts also include Hello Stranger featuring Dale Jett, a grandson of Carter Family founders A.P. and Sara Carter.
Year-round, too, you can view exhibits and learn more of the “Bristol Sessions” story at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, a Smithsonian Institution affiliate, which connects how Bristol’s rich musical heritage lives on in today’s music.
birthplaceofcountrymusic.org; 423-573-1927
Tweetsie Railroad Celebrates Milestones in 2017
It’s been 60 years since Tweetsie Railroad opened near the Blue Ridge Parkway on July 4, 1957, first offering a one-mile trip to a picnic area and then back up to the station. The excursion train would later evolve into a full-fledged theme park at Blowing Rock, North Carolina, where Tweetsie’s three-mile-long loop track encircles a Wild West town featuring rides, restaurants, cowboys and show girls in a saloon.
This year also marks 100 years since the park’s Locomotive No. 12 was built, in 1917. Listed on the national historic register, No. 12 is the last surviving narrow-gauge steam locomotive on the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad (ET&WNC), which ran from Johnson City, Tennessee, to Boone, North Carolina, from 1919 to 1940. Come Aug. 26-27 to witness No. 12’s steamy birthday celebration during the park’s Railroad Heritage Weekend.
Tweetsie is also celebrating its birthday with what promises to be its biggest-ever July 4th Fireworks Extravaganza, staying open until 9 p.m., then blasting more than 200 large-caliber pyrotechnic mortar shells with brilliant colors across the High Country sky at 9:30 p.m.
Later, and for the first time, the theme park extends it nighttime operations on Friday and Saturday nights, Nov. 24-Dec. 30, to debut a special holiday event called “Tweetsie Christmas” with twinkling lights, Christmas shows and visits with Santa Claus.
tweetsie.com; 877-898-3874.