Transportation
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Built as a fuel station, Burgaw Depot was 30 feet long on the railroad that ran from Wilmington to Weldon, the longest in the world when completed in 1840. Gen. Robert E. Lee called the railroad the "lifeline of the Confederacy." After Wilmington fell in 1865, the depot became the Confederate headquarters. Union prisoners were massed there, transported by rail 12 miles south, and exchanged. It was expanded in 1916-17 to 300 feet, renovated in 2009-10 as a civic center and railroad museum, and in 1985 NC Archives & History credited it as the oldest depot in the state.
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Burgaw, North Carolina · United States
