The Greenback Depot is a former railroad station located in Greenback, Tennessee, United States. Built in 1914 by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N), the depot served rail freight and passengers traveling in and out of the Greenback area until 1954. Restored for use as a community events center by Ronald Edmondson in the early 2010s, the depot was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013 in recognition of its role in the area's transportation history.
Design
The depot is a one-story frame structure measuring by , and clad in weatherboard and bead board. It was a "combination depot," meaning it housed both passengers and freight (stations for larger cities often had separate depots for passengers and freight). The southern half of the building's roof is hipped, and includes south-facing and west-facing dormers. Most of the windows are four-over-four double-hung sash windows with wooden frames, the exception being a clerestory window on the north wall. The depot retains its original wooden doors. Rolling track doors are located on the east side of the building.
The depot's interior is mostly open space, the exception being an enclosed room in the building's southeast corner (once the "colored" waiting room). The northern half of the building, which was originally the freight area, is situated at a slightly higher elevation, accessible from the main area via steps. This higher elevation was necessary to bring the freight area to the same elevation as rail cars.
The passenger area, in the southern half of the building, was originally divided into three sections: the colored waiting room in the southeast corner (still enclosed), the general waiting room in the southwest corner, and the ticket agent's office adjacent to the waiting rooms. A baggage area lay between the ticket office and the freight area. The interior has exposed rafters and pendant lights. The original slate roof was replaced with a metal roof in the 1980s, which was in turn replaced in 2012. The roof has been painted gray to match the color of the original roof.
The railroad tracks passed along the western side of the depot. The tracks are no longer present, but the grade is still easily discernible as a gravel path all the way to the Meadow community several miles to the north. The tracks continued across Morganton Road before bending southeastward toward the Jena community (where the main tracks crossed what is now Highway 95). The L&N operated a small freight yard opposite the depot between Morganton Road and Chilhowee Road, west of the Greenback Drug Store. The rail grade immediately west of the depot is included in the National Register nomination.
A small addition to the northern end of the building, constructed in 2012, contains restrooms and a changing room. A breezeway separates this addition from the rest of the building.
History
The Knoxville Southern Railroad (not to be confused with the larger Southern Railway) began building a rail line connecting Knoxville, Tennessee, with Blue Ridge, Georgia, in the late 1880s. This line reached what is now Greenback in 1890. At the rail line's intersection with Morganton Road, developers made plans to build a town known as "Allegheny," presumably named after the Allegheny Springs resort further to the south. Lorenzo Thompson, who had established the Greenback Post Office several miles to the east in the early 1880s, moved his post office to the new town, and the town gradually adopted the name "Greenback."
In 1890, the Knoxville Southern merged with the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad. This railway was, in turn, absorbed by the Atlanta, Knoxville and Northern Railway in 1895. The Atlanta, Knoxville and Northern was purchased by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N) in 1902. For most of the latter half of the 19th century, the L&N had avoided East Tennessee due to competition from the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad (ETV&G), and in 1894 had made an agreement with the ETV&G's successor, the Southern Railway, not to encroach upon one another's territory. After the Southern violated this agreement, the L&N began building a rail line connecting Cincinnati and Atlanta.