The Clinchfield Railroad defined Erwin for over a century. When the Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio Railway made Erwin its headquarters in 1909, it brought hundreds of jobs and transformed what had been a small mountain settlement into a proper railroad town. The yard remained a major CSX facility until it closed in October 2015, ending more than a hundred years of rail operations.
The yard is also the site of one of the more uncomfortable chapters in American sideshow history. In September 1916, the Sparks World Famous Shows circus arrived in the region, and its star elephant, Mary, killed a handler in Kingsport. Under pressure from local officials and neighboring towns threatening to bar the circus, the show's owner agreed to execute the animal. The hanging took place here on September 13, 1916, using the yard's largest industrial crane. The event was photographed and widely reported; Erwin carried its reputation for decades. Today the town has made some peace with the story — an annual Elephant Art Auction raises funds for the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee — but there is no dedicated memorial at the yard itself. It remains an industrial site, and the history is best understood through the Unicoi County Heritage Museum nearby.