When Southern Railway formed in 1894, its first president, Samuel Spencer, sought a site for a new repair facility midway between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Ga., and Rowan County became the chosen location. Former N.C. state legislator John Henderson bought 141 acres and sold the land to Southern Railway for construction of Spencer Shops. The railway then subdivided about 85 acres of surrounding land into 500 lots sold to local residents and business owners for $100 each, and the community, like Spencer Shops, was named for Samuel Spencer. By 1901 the town had grown to 625 residents, and after its incorporation in 1905, Spencer flourished, reaching more than 1,900 residents by 1910. A 48-bedroom YMCA housed workers without homes of their own or those traveling by train from other terminals, and until 1938 a trolley line ran from the original Spencer Shops entrance to downtown Salisbury, giving workers additional access to the surrounding community. Town life centered on a park in the middle of town with a baseball diamond and bandstand, later converted in 1963 into the Park Plaza shopping center. Small businesses prospered through their ties to railroad employees; in 1911 Thomas Stanback, who worked at the Rowan Drug Store in Spencer, invented Stanback Headache Powders and provided samples to railroad workers. The Spencer Watchmaking Company trained 1,300 students over four decades in business and serviced railroad watches worn by many Southern employees. The closure of Spencer Shops in the 1960s and 1970s reshaped downtown as railroad workers and their families moved away and Interstate 85 allowed travelers to bypass the town.