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In the early 1900s Townsend was the heart of a thriving logging, lumber and railroad industry in Tuckaleechee Cove.

That history is preserved at the Little River Railroad and Lumber Company Museum on East Lamar Alexander Parkway in Townsend.

Chartered in 1901, Little River Lumber Company operated on a large scale for almost 40 years.

The first lumber company mill started operation that same year.

Fifty-seven varieties of hardwood were marketed by Little River in the early years of operation, according to the "History of Blount County" by the late Townsend native and Blount County educator Inez Burns.

The company built over 150 miles of railroads in the Smoky Mountains and sawed over 560 million board feet of timber.

"Little River Railroad built extensions onto Eldorado Creek and Laurel Creek into the Cades Cove section, as well as up the middle prong into Walker's Valley (Tremont) and the east prong above Elkmont. The railroad was finished to Elkmont in 1908," the book states.

Townsend got its name in 1902 in honor of Col. W.B. Townsend, the managing president of the corporation.

In the late 1920s the timber resources had been heavily depleted and with the initiation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park movement, 77,000 acres were sold to the government by the Little River Lumber Company.

Congress established the Great Smoky Mountains National Park June 15, 1934, and turned its stewardship over to the National Park Service. Land acquisition continued and on Sept. 2, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt officially dedicated the park.

The mill at Townsend officially closed in 1938.

Founded in 1982 as a non-profit corporation, Little River Railroad and Lumber Company preserves the heritage of that early 1900s logging community, one of the biggest logging operations in Southern Appalachia.

The museum is located on the site of the Townsend sawmill complex.

According to museum officials, Little River became famous far beyond its remote mountain origins, due in large part to its innovations in railroad motive power, which included invention of the first 2-4-4-2 articulated Mallet and the smallest 4-6-2 Pacific ever built for North American standard gauge.

In 1983 the original Walland Depot building was moved to the museum site and now houses the pictures and artifacts.

The site also contains a replica of the Elkmont Post Office, which serves as a gift shop.

The depot houses displays of photographs of locomotives and railcars, train wrecks, the sawmill complex, the tannery that operated at Walland, camp life and of the men who did this hard, dangerous work.

There are also displays of saws and of train tracks.

Visitors can view the vintage Shay 2147, a Class C, 70-ton engine built in 1909, that hauled lumber, people and the setoff houses, which were moved from different logging locations to house the workers and their families. An original setoff house is also on the property.

There are also a caboose (L N Class NE "Little Woody"), two flatcars, portable Frick steam engine, wooden water tank once used in Walland and a log loader on the grounds.