Fulton, first known as Wade's Station, developed in the 1880s along the Mobile to Birmingham Railroad as northern lumbermen arrived and built mills. Marcus Behrman was the first of these lumbermen to establish a lumber mill there, and after receiving deeded property along the railroad in 1888, he formed Virgin Pine Lumber Co., which produced shingles and supplied lumber, leading the town to become known as Behrman. In 1889, Alexander McTaggert bought the company and established Scotch Lumber Company, and after another sale, the Behrman Post Office was renamed Fulton on September 23, 1896, supposedly after Fulton, N.Y. By 1902, William Dwight Harrigan and his associate Fred Herrick of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, had purchased the Scotch Lumber Company at Fulton, and Harrigan served as postmaster until May 29, 1914. Around 1900, the first church in Fulton was built as a union church shared in rotation by Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, a practice that continued until about 1950, when it became Fulton Baptist Church. Schooling in Fulton first took place in two rooms of the church, then in a schoolhouse on a hill in the northern part of town, and around 1916 land was bought from Rev. J. H. Fendley for a larger school where students from elementary through high school were taught until the late 1940s.