page_title: Waynesville, North Carolina
section_title: Frog Level
hierarchical_section_title: Waynesville, North Carolina / History / Frog Level
caption_attribution_description: English: The Waynesville Train Depot sometime in the 1890's.
context_page_description: Waynesville is a town in and the county seat of Haywood County, North Carolina, United States. It is the largest town in Haywood County and the largest in western North Carolina west of Asheville. Waynesville is located about 30 miles southwest of Asheville between the Great Smoky and Blue Ridge mountains.
  As of the 2010 census, Waynesville had a population of 9,869. The town is located just outside the Pisgah National Forest and is close to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. Waynesville and Haywood County are part of the four-county Asheville Metropolitan Statistical Area, currently the fifth largest metropolitan area in North Carolina. It is the third largest town in the MSA behind the cities of Asheville and Hendersonville.
context_section_description: Waynesville began to see development after arrival of the railroad in 1884. The agricultural, lumber and tourism industries in Waynesville and Haywood County began to thrive as access to the west was opened up.
  The area of Waynesville located along Richland Creek, northwest and downhill from Main Street, was where the railroad tracks were laid. Until this time the area had been essentially a swampland, with a few scattered buildings but no major development. Once the depot was built and the train arrived this section was developed. It was given the name of "Frog Level" by the local community because of its low-lying location along Richland Creek, the "frog level" when the area flooded.
  Downtown and the nearby Frog Level commercial centers of Waynesville continued to be the central focus for social life, transportation, and wholesale and retail businesses through the 1940s. Businesses in the Frog Level area in the 1930s and 1940s included hardware stores, farm supplies, coal sales, auto dealers and garages, furniture stores, wholesale groceries, and warehouses and lumber companies, all of which were businesses dependent on the railroad.
  As the automobile became the primary mode of transportation for most residents, the railroad declined in importance. This in turn led to a shift of business away from Frog Level. The last passenger train arrived in Waynesville in 1949, and freight trains pass through Frog Level twice daily, with most trains continuing on to Sylva.
  By the 1980s the railroad in Waynesville had been integrated into the Southern Railway Company system. The first depot burned in 1900, but it was soon replaced with another depot that remained standing until 1987.
caption: Waynesville Train Depot in Frog Level, c. 1890s
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