Cowan Railroad Museum - Tennessee History for Kids

The Cowan Railroad Museum

Cowan Railroad Museum

This isn't one of the state's bigger tourist attractions. In fact, not a lot of people even know there's a place called Cowan, let alone a museum there. But you can learn a lot at the Cowan Railroad Museum. We're going to show you the place, and tell you the story behind the railroad that changed this part of Tennessee.

You can see Cowan on this road map.

If you look at a map of Tennessee, you'll see that Cowan is in Franklin County, east of Winchester. So why is there a railroad museum here? Because if it weren't for the railroad there would be no Cowan.

Here's the story: Back in the 1840s, a group of investors organized what would eventually become the first railroad in Tennessee. Its original idea was to link Nashville with Chattanooga, which is why it was originally called the Nashville and Chattanooga Railway.

The track of the NC & St L

If you draw a straight line from Nashville to Chattanooga, that line doesn't come anywhere near Cowan. So why did the railroad pass through Cowan? Because there is a very large mountain range called the Cumberland Mountains between Nashville and Chattanooga. That mountain range is higher in some places than it is in others, and narrower in some places than it is in others. And if you are building a railroad, you want to avoid mountains as much as possible, because it costs a lot more to lay track over or through mountains than it does to lay track on flat land.

In the 1850s engineers decided that the best way for a railroad to get from Nashville to Chattanooga was to dig a tunnel through the Cumberland Mountains. The small train station at the north side of that tunnel became known as Cowan, and the small town that grew around it was entirely because of the railroad.

The photograph at the Cowan Railroad Museum shows the entrance to the Cumberland Tunnel

Crews began laying the rail line from Nashville to Chattanooga in 1847. The most difficult part of it by far was the 2,200-foot tunnel. “Work was carried on in three shifts,” Wilbur Creighton wrote in a book called The Building of Nashville. “The drilling was done by hand, since the steam drill had not been perfected at the time. One man would hold and turn a short length of steel bit, while two others struck it with eight-pound hammers.”

Most of the laborers who built the railroad were African-American slaves.

This map shows the route of the railway in the 1870s

When the rail line connecting Nashville to Chattanooga opened in 1854, people were pretty excited. But during the Civil War the railroad took on an unexpected significance. When the Union Army moved through Tennessee, it basically followed the Nashville and Chattanooga Railway line southeast from Nashville; through Murfreesboro, through southern Tennessee into northeast Alabama; and then east to Chattanooga. For a brief time, Cowan was a pretty strategic place.

A NC & StL plaque in Nashville's Centennial Park

The railway flourished after the war and grew to become known as the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway. And for nearly a century after the war it remained one of the most important companies in Tennessee. Several towns, such as Tullahoma and Decherd, owe their existence to the NC&StL. Largely because of the NC&StL line, Franklin County was chosen as the site of the University of the South (also known as Sewanee). One of railway's executives gave so much money to Vanderbilt that there is a dormitory there named after him. Some of the largest employers Nashville and Chattanooga have ever ever recruited were brought by the NC&StL.

The presidents of the NC&StL

Railroads eventually declined, however, and in 1955 the NC&StL was merged with its main competitor, the Louisville & Nashville. Today the rail line through Cowan is owned by CSX Railway. The tiny train station that houses the museum, however, hasn't been used by the railway for decades.

The interior of the Cowan museum

Several years ago the people of Cowan decided to turn their old, abandoned train station into a small museum. Today, just about everything that you see in this museum consists of things donated by people who live there. There is NC&StL memorabilia of all kinds; NC&StL history books; model trains; antique maps; pictures; and an old locomotive and caboose that you can climb on.

Here are tools that people used to use to work on the railroad. Ask about what they were for.

And what train museum would be complete without model trains?

Click here to be taken to the Cowan Railroad Museum's official web site.