Fairfax’s railroad roots and old depot shape town history

Fairfax still shows the shape of the railroad town that built it. The old depot on Pickens Avenue now serves as a senior citizen community center, while the Virginia Durant Young House next to Fairfax Town Hall on U.S. Highway 278 keeps the town’s suffrage and public-service history in plain view.

From Sanders and Campbell Station to Fairfax

Before 1880, Fairfax was a very small community with two names that reflected its split identity: the post office was called Sanders and the train stop was called Campbell Station. The railroad shaped the town’s growth from the start, and Fairfax received its first charter in 1893 before incorporating in 1896 with W. J. Sanders as its first mayor. The town was re-chartered in 1898, a quick sequence that shows how a rail stop became a formal civic center.

That early history still matters because the town did not grow around one grand founding moment. It grew around transportation, names people used every day, and the practical needs of a place tied to the tracks. In Fairfax, the railroad was not just a way in and out. It was the framework that turned a stop into a town.

The depot that became a community room

The Fairfax Train Depot was built in the late 1800s on Pickens Avenue, when rail service was the clearest link between Fairfax and the wider region. Florida Central Railroad put in a north-south line, and trains still roll through the area on east-west and north-south lines, but the old depot now serves another purpose. Today, it is a senior citizen community center.

That reuse says a lot about how Fairfax keeps its history alive. Instead of standing empty, the depot still gives people a reason to walk through its doors. In a small town, that kind of building does more than preserve memory. It keeps a public space active for the residents who live with the town’s history every day.

The Young house and the town’s women’s history

Just next to Fairfax Town Hall, the Virginia Durant Young House carries another layer of the town’s story. The National Register nomination describes it as a one-and-one-half-story frame residence that was originally the home and offices of Virginia Durant Young and Dr. William Jasper Young. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on August 8, 1983, and today serves as the Fairfax Library.

The house is tied to a family that shaped Fairfax in more than one way. The Youngs willed their house and books to the town as a library, turning a private home into a public institution. That decision made the building part of everyday life in Fairfax, not just a preserved landmark for special occasions.

Virginia Durant Young was born in Georgetown on March 10, 1842, and began writing during the Civil War under various pseudonyms. By the 1890s, she was helping transform South Carolina’s woman suffrage climate. Her Fairfax home is therefore more than an old house. It marks the place where journalism, political activism, and civic memory meet.

Health care, daily life, and a town that still functions around its landmarks

Dr. William Jasper Young left another lasting imprint on Fairfax through local health care. He bequeathed the nucleus of funding for the Allendale County Hospital and required that it be located in Fairfax. That choice still echoes in the town’s present-day role as a place where care is close to home, not far from it.

Fairfax remains home to the Allendale County Hospital, the John Edward Harter Nursing Facility, Scotsman Icemakers, Coosaw Farms, and numerous community churches. Those names matter because they show that Fairfax is still a place where public institutions, work, worship, and care sit within the same small civic footprint. In Allendale County, where the 2020 Census counted 8,039 residents and the July 1, 2025 estimate was 7,355, that kind of local concentration carries real weight.

The county’s small scale also explains why reused buildings matter so much. A depot that becomes a community center and a house that becomes a library are not just preservation projects. They are working parts of a town that still depends on recognizable places to hold its civic life together. In Fairfax, the past is not distant. It is still part of the town’s daily map.

Connections that kept Fairfax open to the world

Fairfax’s story did not end with railroads. Bell Telephone Company built lines to Fairfax in 1906, extending the town’s connections into a new era of communication. That detail matters because it shows a pattern that runs through Fairfax history: the town has repeatedly adapted its old infrastructure to new needs.

Taken together, the depot, the Young house, Town Hall, the hospital, and the library tell the same story from different angles. Fairfax grew around transportation, but it endured through public use. That is why its railroad roots still shape how the town sees itself now.