06/27/2026
HISTORY HAPPY HOUR TONIGHT!! Join us at 6PM in the Chester Inn Board Room to welcome Carson Sailor from Johnson City Railroad Experience!
"Carson Sailor is a museum professional, public historian, and lifelong railroad enthusiast who currently serves as Assistant Director of the Johnson City Railroad Experience and Chair of the Northeast Tennessee Museum Association. Prior to his work in East Tennessee, Carson served as Executive Director of the Southern Appalachian Historical Association and the Appalachian Heritage Museum, where he developed programs and exhibits exploring the unique history and culture of the Appalachian region.
For Carson, working with railroads feels a bit like coming home. Growing up in Florida, he was the quintessential “train kid,” spending countless hours with his grandfather watching CSX orange juice trains roll through Palatka. The old Seaboard line also ran through his great-grandmother’s yard, and some of his earliest railroad memories are of watching trains haul ferns out of Pearson, Florida. His connection to Florida railroading deepened during his undergraduate years at Flagler College, where he lived in the former Florida East Coast Railway office building—an experience that quite literally immersed him in the legacy of Henry Flagler.
As a native Floridian, Carson has long been fascinated by tourism, development, and the ways ambitious visions reshape communities for better and worse. That interest followed him into graduate school and his professional career in Appalachia, where he discovered striking parallels between the histories of Florida and the Southern Mountains—regions shaped by outside investment, rapid development, economic opportunity, and cultural change. While teaching public history at Appalachian State University, he explored the story of the East Tennessee & Western North Carolina Railroad, an experience that helped lay the foundation for his current work interpreting railroad history at JCRE.
In Building Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Florida East Coast Railway, Carson invites audiences on a journey through the creation of Florida’s famed “American Riviera,” examining how one railroad helped transform a sparsely populated coastline into a world-renowned tourist destination. As we ease into summer in East Tennessee, put on your favorite resort wear and prepare for a fun, engaging look at sunshine, railroads, ambition, and the making of modern Florida—because all signals are green for the Sunshine State! ☀️🚂🌴"
