Kenly: Railroad Town Named for a Railroad Man

Kenly came into existence in the eighteen eighties when the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad laid its Short-Cut line through Johnston County. The railroad did not just build through here. It built Kenly.

The town was chartered in eighteen eighty-seven and named for John R. Kenly, the Northern Division Superintendent of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, who later rose to company president. For its first decade, the town revolved entirely around rail freight.

Then, in the eighteen nineties, bright leaf tobacco growers discovered the sandy Carolina soil was made for curing, and a tobacco economy layered itself on top of the rail economy. Today Kenly sits at the crossroads of Johnston and Wilson counties and keeps a tobacco museum that documents how flue-cured leaf reshaped the entire region.