In 1904, when the Hassinger brothers came from the Penn. county of Forest to the Va. county of Washington with the idea of continuing their fatherÕs lumber business, they liked what they saw: thousands of acres of virgin forest. Two years later, they built a sawmill and a town to support its workers, called Konnarock in Washington County. In less than ten years, the Hassinger Lumber Company was employing over 400 workers, had laid down over 75 miles of railroad track, had built 20 logging camps, and was sawing almost 60,000 board feet of lumber per day. Not only did the Hassinger Lumber Company cut timber in Washington County, Virginia, it also did extensive timbering in neighboring Ashe County, North Carolina, and also sawed timber cut in Watauga County, North Carolina, when the Deep Gap Tie and Lumber Company, located in the Watauga County village of Deep Gap, bought the Hassinger Lumber CompanyÕs Shay locomotive No. 3, sending its logs to the Hassinger sawmill in Konnarock.