Living Jackson Magazine :: Railroads & Depots

Railroads & Depots

By Gail Ellen Daly
Photos by Joshua T. Barnett

Children waved as the Iron Horse roared past. Mail came through four times a day. Warehouses built close to city depots, stored cotton and crops. People could travel in a fraction of the time to places a horse and buggy could not.

Nothing sparked the growth of Jackson County more than the railroads. As trains traveled through the county on their way to Athens or Monroe, towns along the routes prospered.

Railroads, which meandered through all of Jackson County, not only helped cities grow, they created towns while providing jobs.

There were station agents, section crews and line crews, conductors, engineers and firemen to feed the wood-fired locomotives. Beyond railroad-related jobs, as the cities expanded, businesses that sprang up around the railroad depots needed workers.

Homes were built; the population grew. Passengers and freight moved along the steel rails.

“Everything came and went by train,” said Hoschton resident Ralph Freeman. “And the trains helped the cities grow.”

He remembered they had four mail deliveries each day. “You could mail a letter to someone in Winder in the morning and have a reply by afternoon,” Freeman said.

Freeman’s father, a noted physician and surgeon, also served as the railroad’s doctor.

“The train crew would pick me up into the engine,” the 92-year-old recalled. “When I was older, they taught me how to run the train.”

Construction of the tracks

Railroad days in Jackson County began well before paved roads and automobiles, at a time the entire area was nothing but farmland and woods.

A “railroad note” printed in The Jackson Herald from either late April or early May 1882, as construction neared Jefferson, stated: “It is our road; it is the mighty power that is rapidly nearing Jefferson, and will soon bind our town fast to the living world with arms of iron and completely revolutionize old Jefferson and the country through which it passes.”

The railroad did indeed revolutionize the county.

Although much has been written about the early Gainesville Jefferson & Southern (GJ&S) line, the Northeastern Railroad through Commerce predated GJ&S.

According to the history of Commerce (Harmony Grove), sometime in the early 1870s the Richmond and Danville Railroad decided to build the Airline Railroad between Toccoa and Gainesville.

After completing the line, railroad directors decided to connect Gainesville and Athens via Jefferson or Harmony Grove. C.W. Hood and W.B.J. Hardman guaranteed the purchase of $50,000 worth of stock, which Jefferson failed to match.

Connecting with the Airline at Lula, traveling through Nicholson and Center, the Northeastern met the Georgia Railroad in Athens. Built largely with convict labor, construction began in 1875.

On April 8, 1876, The Forest News noted that “as regards this enterprise, the Athens paper informs us that 14 miles of the road is finished and with an increase of hands put upon the force, the entire route will be completed by the middle of July or the first of August.”

Rail service on the Northeastern actually began on Sept. 1, 1876, bringing an economic upturn to all three towns along the line.

The Harmony Grove depot stood on a tract of land C.W. Hood donated. Spencer Park now sits on part of the former site of the depot, long ago demolished.

The Athens-Lula line never paid its stockholders dividends and in 1899 it merged with the Southern Railway Company. In 1980, Southern merged with Norfolk and Western Railway, forming the Norfolk Southern Railway.

Long freight trains still rumble through Commerce; the standard gauge tracks still splits the downtown in half. Who has not been caught at a crossing, watching the cars roll by?

Not too long after trains began rumbling through old Harmony Grove, a second rail line began carrying passengers and freight between Gainesville and Athens—this time through Jefferson.

Organized in 1872, the Gainesville, Jefferson & Southern Railroad began laying 20 miles of narrow-gauge track from Gainesville to Jefferson, through Belmont, Talmo and Pendergrass.

Construction reached its peak in 1881 as Mr. Blackstock, the contractor, cut through the earth. By November 1881, the engine arrived in Gainesville, heading for Jefferson.

“Capt. Collier, engineer of the GJ&S Railroad arrived yesterday evening in our town,” The Jackson Herald reported the same month, “and will locate our depot before he leaves.”

As selected by Collier, the depot was finally located on James E. Randolph’s land. All right-of-way was secured “except through Mrs. Turner’s land which we hope will be settled to everyone’s satisfaction.”

On Feb. 17, 1882, the weekly publication noted that “Mr. Christopher Bell, who lives on the line, shipped a bale of cotton to Gainesville, making it the first ever carried by the road.”

In April 1882, track came within a mile of Pendergrass. A year later, train service between Gainesville and Jefferson began.

The same year, GJ&S began laying track from Belmont through Hoschton, passing through Jug Tavern, ending in Monroe. The 55-mile line from Gainesville south to Monroe opened on March 8, 1884. Although known as the Jug Tavern route, citizens changed the town’s name to Winder in 1894.

“Actually there were two or three routes picked out for the line,” Freeman said, “and the final decision was left to the railroad engineer.”

In his book “Georgia’s Railroad History & Heritage,” author Steve Storey notes that before any train ever moved along the tracks, the Georgia Railroad acquired a controlling interest in the GJ&S, along with a controlling interest in the 10-mile long Walton Railroad that connected Monroe to Social Circle.

As the narrow-gauge spur that left Gainesville clickety-clacked its way to Social Circle, travel between the two was a day’s outing.

In her history of Talmo, Caroldene McEver noted that newspapers of the early 1900s “displayed inviting ads for Sunday round-trip excursions from Gainesville to Social Circle with time there to see a baseball game.”

In his history of Jackson County, Frary Elrod wrote: “It was originally called the Gainesville, Jefferson and Social Circle, and ran from Jefferson to Gainesville and from Gainesville to Social Circle. A wood-fired steam locomotive that ran on a narrow-gauge track pulled the first train. It hauled passengers and freight.”

A one-hour trip from Talmo to Gainesville cost a passenger 25 cents.

Glory days give way to the automobile

Glory days for the GJ&S lasted but a few years, as the line entered receivership in March 1897. In 1904, it was sold under foreclosure to the new Gainesville Midland Railway.

Two years later, Gainesville Midland (GM) extended the line south from Jefferson to Fowler Junction where it connected with the Seaboard Air Line, 2 miles west of Athens. From there, with a “trackage rights agreement,” GM trains continued to Athens. Since this extension was standard gauge track, GM converted the Jefferson-Gainesville section in 1908.

Around 1923, McEver said, GM discontinued rail passenger service between Jefferson and Gainesville. However, bus service operated on the tracks powered by a Ford engine.

“The rickety ride,” McEver said, “which would swing you backward and forward, carried a dozen passengers.”

After the bus, came the streetcar. It resembled a trolley car and also used the tracks.

“The roads were not paved then,” McEver said. “It cost me 10 cents to ride that streetcar (from Jefferson) to Gainesville.”

The Monroe branch remained narrow gauge until 1913.

Freeman recalled that in 1947, after GM abandoned the Monroe-Belmont branch, “Roy Jackson picked up all the rails and cross-ties for the railroad; they gave him the rails and ties and all the right-of-way except for the Hosch and Hill properties.”

“It’s said he got rich on those right-of-ways,” he added.

When L.C. Bell began a span of 44 years working for the GM line, the bus still carried passengers.

“It was right after the war—1946 or 1947—that the railroad lost the mail contract,” he said. “Since they were losing money with the bus service, it was discontinued.”

He also remembered when the line abandoned the Monroe branch. “They needed permission from the Interstate Commerce Commission,” he said. “They had to prove they were losing money.”

Bell, who served as a brakeman, flagman, conductor, engineer and yardmaster in Gainesville before retiring, believes the automobile was partly responsible for the decline.

In 1959, Seaboard Air Line bought GM’s 40-mile line. The Seaboard and Chessie Systems merged in 1980 to form CSX, whose freight trains continue rumbling through Talmo and Pendergrass. From Jefferson the tracks pass through Arcade, heading south to Athens.

The Depots

Both freight and passengers used depots at Jefferson, Pendergrass, Talmo, Braselton and Hoschton.

Although Jefferson’s depot sits silent and unused on Mahaffey Street, Hoschton, Pendergrass and Talmo have been renovated, and preserved the past, for community use.

The Hoschton Depot was built in 1883 by the Hosch Brothers, who donated land and built the depot at no cost to the town or the railroad. It was to be used only for railroad purposes. They also gave the railroad easements through their property. Years later, when the line was abandoned, the railroad tried to auction off the depot. The Hosch family sued and won. Over the years, local businesses such as a vet have used the depot for office space. In 2000 the Depot was placed on the National Register of Historic Places thanks to the efforst of the Hoschton Women’s Civic Club and the City. It now hosts community events and public meetings.

The centerpiece of Pendergrass is its historic depot, which has been completely renovated. It serves as the focal point for community events.

Talmo’s depot also survives and although privately owned, can be reserved for private functions. Ten years ago Wayne Miller bought the old depot, moving it across the street to where he had acquired all the land and buildings.

“There was a lot of resistance (about moving it) from the people in town,” Miller said. “Now I’ve restored it to how it was in 1910.”

With a major addition of a kitchen and bathroom facility, the glowing structure can be used for parties, weddings and reunions. He also located a caboose in West Virginia, which now sits next to the depot.

Once upon a time, before the paved roads and long before the Interstates, we traveled by rail.

Most Jackson County residents frequently drive past a prime example of the Iron Horse. Gainesville Midland No. 116, a steam locomotive built in 1907, sits proudly in front of Jefferson High School, a shelter protecting it from the elements.

Presented to the city in 1959 by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, it reminds us of the railroad’s essential role in the county’s history.

This reminder, along with history buffs, railroad museums and renovated depots, has kept alive the romance of those railroad days.

Gail Ellen Daly is a freelance writer and former newspaper reporter living in Apple Valley with her husband and animals.

Historical Society Picnic to feature Railroads

At its annual July picnic, the Jackson County Historical Society presents a program devoted to railroads.

The picnic on July 17 will be held at Talmo City Hall at 6 p.m. Following the picnic, a presentation on the history of the old Gainesville Midland line will take place across the street at the restored Talmo Depot.

Several former railroad employees will talk about their years on the railroad.