Selma Union Depot: Where Two Railroads Crossed and a Town Was Born

The town of Selma, North Carolina, was born on May first, eighteen sixty-seven, the day lots were sold around a new railroad station on the North Carolina Railroad. The original Mitchner station was built here in eighteen fifty-five, and historians believe it is the oldest surviving train station in North Carolina. The current Union Depot building, completed in nineteen twenty-four to a design by architect A.

M. Griffin, was shaped by the unusual problem of serving two railroads at once: the north-south Atlantic Coast Line and the east-west Southern Railway crossed here at an angle, so Griffin designed the depot to serve both lines. It remains an active Amtrak station today, one of the few historic depots in the state still doing the job it was built for.