The Railroad Capital: Atlantic Coast Line and Wilmington's Industrial Age

In eighteen forty the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad opened, stretching about one hundred sixty-one miles north to Weldon. At that moment it was the longest railroad in the world. Wilmington became, essentially, the railroad hub of North Carolina.

That railroad transformed the regional economy. Naval stores, lumber, and agricultural products that had moved by river now moved by rail, faster and in greater volume. The city grew with the network. By the turn of the twentieth century a series of consolidations had absorbed the Wilmington and Weldon along with dozens of other lines across the region.

The result was the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, one of the great trunk lines of the American South, connecting Virginia to Florida through more than five thousand miles of track. The Atlantic Coast Line made Wilmington its corporate headquarters. The railroad's offices, shops, and repair facilities employed thousands. The Wilmington rail yard was the heartbeat of the city's industrial economy for most of a century.

The headquarters stayed in Wilmington until nineteen sixty, when the Atlantic Coast Line moved its main offices to Jacksonville, Florida. It was a blow the city felt for years. The rail yards and engine houses that had filled blocks of the city gradually fell silent.

Today the Wilmington Railroad Museum on Water Street preserves locomotives, rolling stock, and documentation from this era. The museum occupies a historic railroad building. The old rail corridor is still visible in the city's street grid, the wide right-of-way that once moved the whole region's harvest to the sea.