Built by the Tennessee Central Railway in 1909, the depot served Cookeville until the 1950s when passenger train service to the city was phased out.

Politicians and newspaper reporters across the Upper Cumberland region initiated a massive publicity campaign in the early 1880s calling for the railroad to be extended across Middle Tennessee.

[1] In 1884, mining entrepreneur Alexander Crawford, believing the Upper Cumberland region to be endowed with vast deposits of high-quality coal, chartered the Nashville & Knoxville Railroad with plans to extend the railroad across the Cumberland Plateau and allow shipment of coal to markets in Nashville and Knoxville.

Although a particularly difficult stretch between Watertown and Silver Point— requiring the building of several trestles across the Caney Fork— slowed the railroad's construction, the Nashville & Knoxville's tracks nevertheless reached Cookeville in July 1890.

Although Crawford died shortly thereafter, his sons continued his work, and managed to extend the tracks to Monterey, at the edge of the Cumberland Plateau.

The mere announcement of the company's plans for the depot "one half-mile west of the courthouse" caused property values in the western section of town to skyrocket.

Residences were built along or near the tracks, and a shanty town known as "Boxtown" developed in the vicinity of what is now Cookeville Regional Medical Center.