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The advent of railroads across America in the 1800s made a huge impact, more so than we can easily fathom from our twenty-first century viewpoint. Unless we are personally involved in an industry that utilizes railroad transport, we’re more likely to view them as a nuisance, blocking our pathway as we’re headed to school or work or shopping. That wasn’t always the case, and it’s not out of line to say that the railroad created Tullahoma.

The Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad chose a site about halfway between those two cities for a passenger depot, which would conveniently serve the surrounding areas. In 1850, local founders created a Town Company to establish the Town of Tullahoma. By 1852, the first Tullahoma depot was opened and trains were regularly running between Nashville and Tullahoma, and a branch line to Manchester and McMinnville had been chartered. Things moved fast along the railroad (no pun intended) and service to cities and towns beyond Tullahoma was added. In 1854, the line from Nashville to Chattanooga was completed.

In Tullahoma, the town was being planned and growing all at the same time. The original plan for the railroad had been to locate the terminal about where Decherd Street crossed the railroad. However, the addition of the above mentioned trunk line, which joined the main line near Lincoln Street, caused a change of plans. The terminal was instead built between Grundy and Lincoln Streets, where the red caboose now sits, but on the east side of the tracks. Soon, the town was booming, and well-to-do people from Nashville and Chattanooga were building vacation homes in Tullahoma. The town business lots near the depot became the hot ticket, as retail business owners wanted to be located where the people were, and the people were coming to Tullahoma on the train.

The original depot was destroyed in a town fire in 1883, and a replacement was built in the same spot. Businesses cropped up along Atlantic Street, opposite the station, and around the corners onto Lincoln and Grundy Streets, and then slowly spread along the other streets. Atlantic Street between Grundy and Lincoln was the hottest area at the time, though.

By the end of the nineteenth century, a separate freight depot had been added, directly west across the tracks from the passenger depot. Eventually, traffic around the depots became a serious problem. In 1921, the freight depot was moved a few blocks south, just past Warren Street. During World War II, the passenger depot was moved two blocks north, where the building still sits, used by the CSX Railroad for their work crew station.

My friend Dot Watson was a little girl and her family lived on North Atlantic Street. She remembers the passenger depot being moved, and she described the building being placed on rolling poles and an apparatus with pulleys and ropes and powered by a mule or horse moving it along slowly, then the apparatus being moved several feet and the same movement happening again until the building was finally in its new location.

Some of the information in this article was gleaned from the book, Historic Tullahoma, originally written by Paul Pyle. Copies are available at the Mitchell Museum inside South Jackson Performing Arts Center.

I’m working on a pictorial history book about Tullahoma in the twentieth century, roughly 1920s to 1980s. If you have some sharp, large photos you can share, I’d be honored to see them. I’ll scan them and then immediately return them to you. I’m looking mostly for businesses, industries, and major events. You can contact me at alanmayes@lighttube.net.