Ferrum, whose name is Latin for iron, developed about 1892 along the new Roanoke and Southern Railway linking Roanoke, Virginia, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on the line known as the "Punkin Vine." The village became a regional shipping hub early in the 20th century. St. James Methodist Church, built about 1896, is Ferrum's oldest brick building. In 1913, the Virginia Methodist Conference, at the initiative of its Woman's Missionary Society, established Ferrum Training School to educate mountain children, and the school later grew into Ferrum College and the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum. During Prohibition, a number of Ferrum residents were involved in a lucrative illegal whiskey conspiracy that ended in one of the longest trials in Virginia history.