Kemper Street Station
History
The new Kemper Street Station, which opened on October 31, 1912, was one of many improvements made in Lynchburg by Southern Railway to double track its mainline between Atlanta and Washington, D.C. The Rivermont Tunnel, the James River Bridge, and the high steel trestles like those over Fishing Creek and Blackwater Creek were built to bypass the congestion in Lynchburg’s Lower Basin where Southern Railway and its predecessors had been located since before the Civil War. Architect Frank P. Milburn (1868-1926) designed this unique two-level station which once served as many as 18 daily passenger trains bearing names, such as the Birmingham Special, the Southerner, the Tennessean, and the Crescent Limited. In 1979 Southern Railway turned over its passenger service to Amtrak.
Marker is on Kemper Street just north of Park Avenue, on the left when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
