Purcellville's train station has stood on its site since 1904, replacing a depot built around the time the railroad arrived in 1874, and it served passengers, mail, and freight. The railroad brought a business boom as farmers received feed, fertilizer, and farm machinery by rail and shipped grain, livestock, and dairy products eastward, while mills, manufacturers, and retail stores grew up nearby. Like other railroad towns in western Loudoun County, Purcellville also became a popular summer resort, with hotels and boarding houses lining Maine Street. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, special trains brought hundreds to the summer Bush Meeting for religious revivals, prohibition lectures, and entertainment, and in September African Americans arrived for Emancipation Day, an annual day-long celebration of freedom, though segregation laws forced them into the "colored" waiting room for the return trains.