The building is the oldest surviving commercial structure in Dalton and is a "fine example" of depot architecture in Georgia in the mid-1800s.

[3] It was a site used during the Great Locomotive Chase (satirized in a Buster Keaton film, The General) and was a troop transport location during the American Civil War, including during the Battle of Dalton.

During the Great Locomotive Chase, on April 12, 1862, the Confederacy's pursuit train Texas dropped off 17-year-old Edward Henderson in Dalton to telegraph ahead to Chattanooga to warn that Andrews' Raiders were on their way.

[2] The station last had passenger service in 1971, when an unnamed Louisville & Nashville Railroad (L&N) train between Evansville, Indiana and Atlanta, Georgia was terminated on the eve of Amtrak's assuming most passenger operations in the United States.

In mid-20th Century the station had the following Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway passenger operations (the NCStL leased the W&A tracks; in 1957 the NCStL was merged into the L&N): [6] Mid-century Southern Railway service consisted of:[7]