Building a Railroad Town, 1855-1993

Building a Railroad Town, 1855-1993. Thompson's Station, Tennessee. The Tennessee and Alabama Railroad connected the "town of Thompson" to Nashville in 1855 and south to Columbia in 1859. Antebellum investors envisioned the railroad, which traveled through some of the most productive lands in Davidson, Williamson, Maury, and Giles counties, as a vital link between rapidly expanding Nashville and the Tennessee River at Decatur, Alabama. A boon to the town's economy, the railroad enable local farmers to ship grain, including German millet, tobacco, cotton, and livestock to more distant markets. Destroyed during the Civil War, a new station was constructed in 1866 at a cost of about $600. By 1877, Thompson's Station was a growing railroad trade center for southern Williamson County. The town boasted about 300 people, with four stores, a drug store, a steam flouring mill, post office, and several churches centered around the all-important tracks., An early morning fire on February 14, 1889, destroyed "the entire business portion" of the village. According to accounts, only the Building of McIntosh and Thompsons survived and most businesses were never rebuilt. Nevertheless, a surviving 1905 Thompson's Station ledger book shows substantial goods being received by downtown merchants like William Veeners, A.B. Epps, J.E. Howard, and J.O. Grigsby., Today, the Thompson Station Bank, built in 1913, is the only surviving early 20th century commercial building. The bank closed in 1927, the result of a changing rural economy., Declining prices hurt farmers throughout the 1920s, and the growing use of cars and trucks to transport goods and people supplanted the railroad. The Thompson's Station Depot was finally torn down in 1952. Thompson's Station was incorporated in 1990 and the depot was rebuilt in 1993, symbolizing the town's past and its future., Photo captions: , Left: 1878 Map of Thompson's Station, D.G. Beers and Co. , Map of Williamson County, Tennessee, 1878. , Courtesy Tennessee State Library and Archivesbr> , Middle: Tennessee and Alabama Railroad Ad "Open to Thompson's Station," Tennessean, August 23, 1855. , Right top: 1913 Thompson Station Bank - Courtesy Rick Warwick , Right bottom: Ca. 1940 commercial district showing Roy Regan's store, center and the granary to the left. - Courtesy Rick Warwick