ASHEVILLE, N.C. — While places like cemeteries can provide meaning and comfort to those mourning lost loved ones, some descendants of African Americans don’t have that option.

Sometimes, the lost bodies discovered didn’t belong to cemeteries at all.

For decades, the mayor of Marion, N.C. has been researching the story of the Swannanoa Gap.

In the late 1800s, railroad tunnels through the mountains were constructed by convicts and former slaves. More than a hundred of them didn’t survive the grueling labor.

But the location of their remains was mystery until just a few years ago.

“This is Jarrett’s tunnel. It is the tunnel that is the farthest east of the six tunnels that remain,” said Marion Mayor Steve Little.

That tunnel, dug out by hand with tools, rocks and simple explosives in the late 1800s. Remnants remain to this day, reminding us of the back-breaking work.

The jagged edges of the rocks seem natural. But there’s nothing natural about what happened here.

“We did not treat these people as though they were human. We treated them worse than we treated the tools,” Little said.

Today, the landscape subtly tells that horrific tale, drip by drip.

“The tears of the mountain. It’s the way I think about it,” said Little. “Crying because of what’s going on.”

The late 1800s song, “Swannanoa Tunnel,” was recorded in the mid-1900s to honor the work of the man who changed North Carolina forever.

Nine miles of railroad track and seven tunnels, it opened Asheville and the mountains up to the rest of the state. The progress was priceless, but it came with a hefty price.

It was built by the blood and tears of some 3,000 convicts, largely former slaves arrested under unjust Jim Crow laws.

In 1875, the state penitentiary leased the convicts to complete the work. At least 139 died, mostly just tossed aside, and forgotten — until now.

“Those who were old enough to remember probably would have thought slavery was terrible, but this was worse,” Little said. “I haven’t stopped talking about it since I wrote that history paper in 1973 or whatever year was.”

A final thesis in college led Little to 50 years of research, books, and even a one-man play. But in 2020, Little felt a big urge to turn research into action.

By Fall 2021, Little asked town officials to have more involvement to construct a memorial to honor all the workers who built these rails.

But missing on that memorial are the names of the 139 who died, 19 of them in horrific cave-in.

“Even though you can see the other end, that’s six football fields away,” Little said.

At 1,800 feet long, the Swannanoa Tunnel remains the most famous of the seven tunnels.

In 1897, crews pounded away on each side of the mountain, agonizing work for 18 months, until they reached the middle as light finally snuck through a celebration for officials — likely a relief for the convicts.

But it didn’t last long.

“Well, few hours after the celebration of a meeting, there was a rumble and almost instantly rock fell right as the locomotive was backing into the tunnel,” Little said.

The song about the Swannanoa Tunnel references the catastrophe.

At least 19 convicts were killed, but their bodies weren’t sent back home.

“They needed a place to bury them, and the most logical spot was the spot just to the south of the location of the tracks,” said Little. “Right in that field is where they dug a hole and put them in, and then covered them up. Forgotten. Forgotten. No marking.

No records of their death.

No records of a burial.

Lost forever.

Or so it was thought.

In early 2022, Little, researchers and a dog named Abby began searching for remains. On a foggy, cool February morning, Abby sniffed and sniffed. If she sat, it meant she detected something. After 45 minutes at the first site, Abby sat.

And the next day, she sat multiple times near the Swannanoa Tunnel just feet from Interstate 40, where thousands of people drive by day after day, oblivious to what happened a century ago.

“I just can’t tell you how excited that makes me to know that everything that I’ve done and read and researched for 40 years is coming together and it’s being shown to be accurate,” Little said.

Abby is trained to sense chemical changes in the soil because the chance of finding remains is unlikely.

But their stories remain.

In Fall 2023, Little traveled to North Carolina’s capital of Raleigh. For years, if not decades, Little has made one point clear.

“These convicts were so disregarded, so disrespected and uncared for that their names weren’t even written down,” he said.

But a new clue arrived in the form of a state law that unsealed all kinds of records, including prison records from the 1800s.

Little scanned several old ledgers line by line, hour after hour, looking for names from the Swannanoa Tunnel collapse. But as the day ended, no luck.

But he remains optimistic as ever.

“I’m convinced there are bound to be other boxes full of papers that were never turned in. Or there’s another book, because there were only 131 convicts who were marked as dying on this project. And I know that’s low,” Little said.

Last fall, researchers dedicated a second memorial near the Swannanoa Tunnel, specifically honoring the convicts who died.

“For 148 years they’ve been waiting for this,” Little said. “If you haven’t done your research and you spent your life on this, this would still be an unknown story to most of North Carolina right? It’s just the right thing to do.”

Fifty years into this, he’s more focused than ever to honor these men and seek justice.

“I would love it for the state to acknowledge what we did wrong. Yes, we were told by law to confine them, to punish them,” Little said. “But we weren’t told by the law to torture them.”

A 150-year-old mystery without an ending so far. But as long as Little is around, he will hunt for more clues.

Unfortunately, the mass grave in North Carolina isn’t unique. In 2018 in the Houston, Texas suburb of Sugar Land, the buried remains of 95 people were discovered at a construction site for a school district.

Archaeologists found the bodies were mostly those of freed Black slaves forced to work in convict labor camps.

The school district is now taking donations to build a memorial and cemetery. The bodies were laid to rest where they were found, but the work continues to identify possible descendants.