Alma Depot

The Alma Depot, built in 1906, is significant in the areas of architecture, commerce, and transportation. Architecturally, it is important as a functionally designed building, that of a small town railroad depot. It incorporates the necessary elements of such a functional structure - a warehouse for shipping, a business office for railroad personnel, and waiting rooms for passengers. The style used is similar to other small-town depots of the era. In commerce, the depot is significant to the local community as the location where, in 1930, a local credit union was founded. This financial institution grew into the Alma Exchange Bank and Trust. It remained in the depot until 1939. It is unusual for a depot to house activities other than railroad-related functions. In transportation history, the depot is significant for representing the role that the railroad has played in the history of Alma. Alma's first railroad, a logging line, was laid in c. 1887. After 1902 it was incorporated into the Brunswick and Birmingham Railroad Company system, which projected a trunk line from Brunswick, Georgia, to Birmingham, Alabama. Several ownership and name changes later it became the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad of today. This depot was apparently the only permanent depot facility ever built by the railroads in Alma and thus served as the center for freight and passenger activities. The depot was especially important for the role it played in the local turpentine and lumber industries.

The location of present-day Alma was first a stop on a logging railroad where it crossed Big Hurricane Creek. When the McLaughlin, Deen, and Company turpentine business started around 1899, Alma was named and became a post office. The town was incorporated in 1904 but not laid out until 1906. The depot, completed that same year, was outside the original town plan. In 1910 the town population was 458 but after Bacon County was created in 1914, Alma became the county seat and its population rose to 1,061 by the 1920 Census. These first decades of the town's growth saw business and residential structures constructed along either side of the railroad, around the depot.

The original rail line through what is now Alma was constructed after 1887 by the Offerman and Western Railroad Company as a logging railroad. The property was sold on July 1, 1902, to the Brunswick and Birmingham Railroad Company. This railroad failed in 1904 and was purchased by the Atlantic and Birmingham Railway (A&B). In 1905, the Atlanta, Birmingham, and Atlantic Railroad (AB&A) was organized to purchase the Atlanta and Birmingham, to extend its trackage, develop mineral lands, and commence rail-water interchange of traffic at Brunswick.

The AB&A was placed in receivership in 1921. A reorganization was completed in 1926 and the line became the AB&C under control of the Atlanta Coast Line (ACL). With aid from the large and successful ACL, the AB&C developed into a profitable road with its main line then running to Waycross and the trackage to Brunswick (the track through Alma) becoming a branch.

The last line to operate through here was the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. Passenger service stopped in 1952 and freight service later. During its peak from 1906 through the 1920s, the depot saw as many as six passenger trains daily, three eastbound and three westbound.

The coming of the railroad coincided with the increased economic growth of the area. Thick pine forests led to the development of pine-related industries including turpentine, rosin, crossties, lumber, and logging. Near present-day Alma, the large McLaughlin, Deen, and Company turpentine still, which depended heavily upon the railroad for shipment of raw products to the coast, was established around 1899.

The Alma depot, when built in 1905-06, resembled many being constructed during the same era, especially in south Georgia, although its roofline is distinctive. Its tile roof, probably covered with Ludowici-made tile, and long rectangular shape was reminiscent of other depots along the line. It was the only depot ever built in Alma and served as a community focal point for the several decades during which it handled passenger service.

After the ending of rail service to Alma, the depot remained in the ownership of the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. By 1975 it was being leased for a feed and seed business and local citizens sought it for reuse as part of a 1976 Bicentennial project. Negotiations ensued and it was eventually transferred first to a private citizen, Mr. Harold L. Chancey, who in 1980 sold it to the present owners. Civic plans for its adaptive reuse have not yet been made.