Historic Charlotte

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Above: The Southern Railway Station as
seen in this early 20th century postcard.
Rail remained the dominant mode of
intercity travel from the 1850s to the 1950s.
FROM THE COLLECTION OF DAVID T. RITCH.
Below: Efforts to establish rail links to major
ports and trading centers began in the
1850s and continues throughout the 1860s.
The proceedings described in this book detail
Charlotte’s efforts to further integrate into
the nascent national rail network.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, ATKINS LIBRARY,
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE.
HISTORIC CHARLOTTE
30
by way of Columbia, South Carolina. The railroad
boosters contended that only the laying
of track would allow the County’s farmers to
enjoy “the improvements and advantages of
the age in which we live.” They named the
proposed line the Charlotte and South
Carolina Railroad and insisted it would save
Mecklenburg County and its neighbors “from
poverty and from ruin.”
Fundraisers were held in towns throughout
the region, including Lincolnton, Salisbury,
Concord, Monroe, and as far away as
Rutherfordton. The response was overwhelmingly
positive. The farmers of the Providence
community organized a barbecue and pledged
$14,000. A sizeable home could be bought at
that time for $3000! By August 1847 the
astounding sum of $300,000 had been raised
for the road. The dream of connecting
Charlotte to Columbia and Charleston by rail
was going to become a reality.
On October 28, 1852, a crowd of about
20,000 people gathered to wait for the arrival
of the first train. All was anticipation and
excitement. Then it happened. The first train
lumbered into the Charlotte station, which
was situated about where the Charlotte
Convention Center now stands.
“More than any other event, the arrival of
the railroad in 1852 set Charlotte on its way
to being the largest city in the Carolinas,” contends
historian Thomas W. Hanchett.
Heretofore, nothing had distinguished
Charlotte economically from other towns in
the southern Piedmont. There had been no
greater reason for farmers to congregate for
business here than in Lincolnton or Monroe
or Concord. The efforts of Fox, Osborne,
Johnston, and their supporters made
Charlotte the railhead of the region and its
transportation and distribution center, a position
it has never relinquished.
With Charlotte having the only rail connection
from the southern Piedmont into
neighboring South Carolina, it was only logical
that the largely State-financed North
Carolina Railroad, extending from Goldsboro
on the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad
westward through Raleigh to Greensboro and
Salisbury, would terminate in Charlotte. The
first train traveled the entire route from
Goldsboro to Charlotte on January 31, 1856.
“We now have a railroad connection with
Raleigh, Petersburg, Richmond, and with all
the cities of the North, on to the lines of
Canada,” the Western Democrat proclaimed.
In 1858, the Wilmington, Charlotte and
Rutherfordton Railroad Company erected a
passenger station on North Tryon Street to
serve as the eastern terminus of a thirty-one
mile line from Charlotte to Lincolnton, which
was completed by April 1861. Dr. Charles
Fox headed the campaign to establish
Charlotte’s fourth railroad of the 1850s, the
Atlantic, Tennessee and Ohio Railroad or