Cookeville Railroad Depot facts for kids
Quick facts for kids |
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Cookeville Railroad Depot
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Cookeville Railroad Depot
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| Location | 116 West Broad Street, Cookeville, Tennessee |
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| Built | 1909 |
| NRHP reference No. | 85002773 |
| Added to NRHP | 1985 |
The Cookeville Railroad Depot is a historic train station in Cookeville, Tennessee. It was built in 1909 by the Tennessee Central Railway. For many years, this depot was a busy place, connecting Cookeville to other cities. It served as a passenger train station until the 1950s.
The depot is now a museum. In 1985, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. This means it's an important historical site worth protecting. The railroad helped Cookeville grow and brought new opportunities to the area.
Building the Tennessee Central Railroad
After the American Civil War, many railroads were built in Tennessee. However, the tough mountains and hills made it hard to build tracks in the Upper Cumberland region. This area includes Cookeville. In the 1870s, a railroad line reached Lebanon, Tennessee. People in the Upper Cumberland region really wanted the railroad to come to their towns. They knew it would help their communities.
In 1884, a businessman named Alexander Crawford started the Nashville & Knoxville Railroad. He believed there was a lot of coal in the Upper Cumberland area. He wanted to build a railroad to carry this coal to cities like Nashville and Knoxville. Building the tracks was difficult, especially over the Caney Fork river. But by July 1890, the tracks reached Cookeville. Soon after, they were extended to Monterey.
Another businessman, Jere Baxter, continued this work in 1893. He started the Tennessee Central Railroad. Baxter faced many challenges, including money problems. He got funds by selling bonds to local counties. He also had to deal with other big railroad companies that didn't want the Tennessee Central to compete with them.
By 1898, the Tennessee Central connected Monterey to Harriman, Tennessee. In 1902, Baxter bought the Nashville & Knoxville Railroad. Two years later, the Tennessee Central connected Nashville to a major railroad in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. This meant that Middle Tennessee was now connected to the rest of the country! People in Cookeville could even travel all the way to Minnesota by train.
After Jere Baxter passed away in 1904, the Tennessee Central still had money troubles. Passenger train travel started to decline in the mid-20th century. More people began using cars and buses. The very last passenger train left Cookeville on July 31, 1955.
The Cookeville Depot's Impact
The first train station in Cookeville was built in the 1890s by the Nashville & Knoxville Railroad. When people heard about the plans for the depot, land prices nearby went up a lot! The Tennessee Central replaced this first depot with the current building in 1909. It has a unique pagoda-like roof.
The railroad depot brought many changes to Cookeville. More homes were built near the tracks. A small community called "Boxtown" even grew up nearby. Shops and businesses opened along the road between the depot and the town square. The railroad also helped new schools like Dixie College and Tennessee Polytechnic Institute get started. These schools later became Tennessee Technological University.
Cookeville Depot Museum
Today, the City of Cookeville and a group called Friends of the Depot take care of the Cookeville Depot. They run it as a museum. You can explore the historic depot building itself. The museum also has a collection of old train cars and other railroad items.
One special item is Engine #509. This steam engine was built in 1913. It was brought to the museum in 2002 and made to look like the engines used by the Tennessee Central. The museum also has two cabooses. A caboose is the car at the very end of a freight train. One of them, a red cupola-style caboose, was restored to look just like it did originally.
