“All Aboard”
In WAKE: Capital County of North Carolina written by Elizabeth Reid Murray, she recounts, “…Though it was the Duke family who built the Cape Fear & Northern Railroad line from Apex to Harnett County, George Benton Alford was actually founding president when the company was chartered in 1891. Alford’s goal of turning the economic tide in Holly Springs and other southern and western Wake communities was delayed for several years until John C. Angier and his brother-in-law Benjamin N. Duke became interested in the project in early 1898. Even then, there was disbelief on the part of Raleigh railroad men that the first spike would be driven. But Alford’s daughter Mattie turned the first shovel of dirt that summer and work began.
The new railroad started operating in 1899 with a skeleton staff made up of one station agent, one “other station man,” an engineer, a fireman, a conductor and three section hands. An early-published schedule of the Cape Fear & Northern announced a daily departure from Angier at 8:30 in the morning, arriving at Holly Springs at 9:26. The afternoon return trip departed Apex at 4:20 and arrived in Angier at 5:40. The schedule was designed to connect with the Seaboard’s express mail trains to and from Raleigh. The line reached Harnett County and the future town of Angier in the spring of 1900. Between these points, stations were established at Duketon (later called Wilbon), Blanchard, Varina Junction and Holland. In 1901, rails were laid to Dunn, where the line connected with the north-south Atlantic Coastline. The company’s success spurred the Dukes to recharter in 1904 as the Durham & Southern Railroad and extend the line from Apex to East Durham.”
The original tracks extended up along the east side of Avent Ferry Road running along the side of the Co-Working Station, behind Dewar’s Antiques and crossing over to Main Street near Quantum Drive to continue along the east side of Main Street all the way up to Apex.
In an interview a few years back, the now late Mrs. Mary Lee Johnson, a lifelong resident of Holly Springs, remembers when the trains came through. The depot was on Avent Ferry Road behind where the town hall is today. Laughing at the memory, Mrs. Johnson said, “Every child, I reckon from Dunn to Durham, would hear the train and they’d run and the conductor would throw them out some candy…and he’d wave at every child.” She recalls the times she rode the train to Durham.
“I was a little bitty thing,” Mrs. Johnson said, recounting the time she and her little companion were so excited about a trip, she said. “We were scared to death that thing was going to jump the track, we thought it was just a’flyin’,” she said, laughing a little at her memory as an adult that the train was really just creeping along.
In that same interview, the now late Mrs. Sylvian Brooks added in agreement, “It would take all day for the train to go just 96 miles.” These old time residents recalled how much vitality the depot added to life in Holly Springs. Folks would “go to the depot” anytime fresh fish was scheduled to arrive and, of course, to wait on the mail.
