Driving along Walsh Road near the former community of Dunbar in Fairfield Township, it would be hard to miss the massive stone pillars that tower high above both sides of the roadway.

Known as the Dunbar Piers, the series of 84-feet-high structures once supported trainloads of freight and passengers crossing the valley on the Marietta, Cincinnati and Cleveland Railroad that ran between Athens and Marietta.

Built more than 150 years ago during the Civil War, it took two years for German and Irish immigrants to construct the four piers and arched railroad bridge abutments from stone quarried at the site.

“No mortar was used, and each stone weighed a ton-and-a-half to two tons. And it’s amazing that they could cut some of the stones thin enough to construct the arches,” said Eldon Young, local historian of the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad, who’s giving a presentation on the piers and railroad at the Campus Martius Museum at 2 p.m. Sunday.

He said including the rails and bridge superstructure, the Dunbar trestle would have topped 105 feet in its heyday.

The last train crossed the piers in 1916, Young said, although other portions of the MC&C Railroad continued in operation in the Vincent and Cutler areas through 1924.

For nearly half a century the railroad played an important role in development of the once-thriving communities of Dunbar, Qualey and Layman in Fairfield Township, as well as other towns and villages-some no longer in existence-between Marietta and Athens.

“When the railroad went, many of those communities went with it,” Young said.

In addition to passengers, the trains carried locally-quarried grindstones, wood, and other freight.

There were at least two major accidents that resulted in loss of life while the railroad was in operation, Young said.

“One occurred just east of Vincent when a passenger car went off the tracks and fell 50-some feet into an abutment,” he said. “The cars were made of wood in those days, and several people were killed.”

Another accident, west of Vincent, involved a trestle that collapsed under the weight of a freight train.

“Five people were killed, but one young boy who was working on the coal tender survived and went to Barlow to get a doctor,” Young said. “Of course the train engines at that time were steam-powered and the engine burst, so most of those people were scalded by steam.”

Young, whose home is located near the piers, will be presenting a history of the Dunbar Piers and the MC&C Railroad between Athens and Marietta during the free program Sunday at the museum.

“He has some great photos of the piers and railroad when it was still in operation,” said Jean Yost, board member of The Friends of the Museum.

He said Young’s presentation will also include photos of former stations and other local facilities along the rail line that were related to the railroad’s history.

“The piers are the best known, but there are also other stone structures that once supported the railroad in the county,” Yost noted. “For example, the old tunnel, for which the community of Tunnel was named in Warren Township, still exists, although it has been closed in.”

He said the remains of an aqueduct, built to carry streamwater around the tunnel, is also still in existence.

“And it’s surprising just how many wooden piers were built to support the railroad when it was still in operation,” Yost added.

Young said the Power Point presentation will trace the railroad from Athens to Marietta and back again.