On April 24, 1908, an F4 tornado tore a 105-mile path from near Dora in Walker County northeast to Sylvania in DeKalb County, killing 35 people and injuring 188 - among them two dead in Blount County, near Royal and Wynnville, not far from Reid’s Gap. Local coverage from the time describes multiple deaths and destroyed sawmills at Reid’s Gap itself, including the Dantzler mill, in the same outbreak.
The lumber trade the storm disrupted had grown large enough the previous year that the L&N had located a full depot at Reid’s Gap to handle the traffic - a measure of how much activity the gap had by then, and how much the storm took from it in a single afternoon.
The tornado wasn’t 1908’s only tragedy at Reid’s Gap. That September, a fast L&N passenger train struck a horse and buggy at a grade crossing near the gap, killing J.A. Calvert instantly and seriously injuring his daughter, Alba Ann, as the two drove out to visit relatives. A Blount County jury awarded the Calvert estate and his daughter a combined $22,500 against the railroad - a striking sum for the time, and a measure of how dangerous the line through the gap could be.