GM&O Train Depot - Selmer, TN
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 35° 10.162 W 088° 35.491
16S E 355064 N 3892985
GM&O stopped passenger service in 1966, little else for this depot.
Looking SW from Court St., Selmer
Waymark Code: WMWMFC
Location: Tennessee, United States
Date Posted: 09/18/2017
Views: 3
County of depot: Mcnairy County
Location of depot: Front St. & Court St., Selmer
Old Photo: 1969
New: 2017
Not sure why police and others hanging around depot in 1969 photo, the railroad ceased passenger traffic in 1966.
"In the late 19th century, McNairy County moved its county seat from Purdy to Selmer because of the upcoming prominence as a railroad town. Mobile and Ohio first laid the tracks through selmer in the late 1850s. This turn of the century station is one of the few Mobile and Ohio depots left in the area." _ Brent Moore
Civil War Trail Marker across the street gives some information about conditions here during the Civil War.
Marker Text:
MOBILE & OHIO RAILROAD
Strategically Important Transportation Route
This is the Mobile and Ohio Railroad which was chartered in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky in 1848 to provide a vital commercial link between the Gulf of Mexico and Cairo, Illinois, on the Ohio River. The last miles of track were laid in April 1861 just as hostilities erupted at Fort Sumter. The strategic significance of the railroad quickly became apparent. By the spring of 1862, thousands of Confederate troops from as far away as Pensacola and Mobile steamed into southwestern Tennessee and northern Mississippi on the railroad in anticipation of an imminent Union offensive. Corinth, Mississippi, was among the most important railroad junction in the western Confederacy. Bethel Station, north of here, was also a strategically significant point that provided access to the Tennessee River and the interior of western Tennessee.
"The Federals took possession of that portion of the Mobile & Ohio railroad near Bethel Station. They had nothing
to oppose them. They burnt two bridges and tore up a portion of the track. All the Mobile & Ohio railroad north of
Corinth has been abandoned" - Houston Telegraph, June 2, 1862.
When Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant massed his army at Pittsburg Landing in April 1862, he intended to disrupt the railroad at Corinth or here at Bethel Station, but the Confederates struck first near Shiloh Church. After failing to defeat the Federals, the Confederate army retreated to Corinth. By the autumn of 1862, Union forces had captured the town. Federal Gen. Grenville M. Dodge rebuilt the shattered rail line and, though constantly harassed by Confederate cavalry, held it until the end of the war.
Local disputes about the location of the railroad right-of-way near the McNairy County town of Purdy resulted in a more-western route for the line. The county seat was moved to Selmer, on the railroad, in 1890.