In 1872 landowners John Gochenour and Josiah Clawson platted 30 lots north and south of the railroad line coming through what would become Buckland. On July 24, 1873, the line was completed to St. Marys and chartered as the Lake Erie and Western. The Vanderbilts, owners of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern line, purchased the LE&W in 1879 and relegated it to substandard service to reduce competition. The Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914 forced the Vanderbilts to sell the line to the Van Sweringen brothers, Cleveland owners of the Nickel Plate Railroad. On October 16, 1964, the Nickel Plate was merged into the Norfolk and Western System, and today the line is owned and operated by the R.J. Corman Railroad Company. The Buckland Railroad Station operated as an agent station into the mid-1950s. The last scheduled passenger train to stop regularly in Buckland was in 1951, when trains were terminated because of the elimination of the mail contract. Two passenger trains continued to run but stopped there only by special request, and the last Nickel Plate passenger train through Buckland was in October 1959. Kathryn "Katie" Dicks, born in 1871, followed her father into the railroad business by becoming a ticket seller at age 12. She was transferred to the Buckland station in 1906 as an agent-operator and held the position for 35 years, serving as telegraph operator and railway agent while also selling tickets, handling baggage, controlling signals, managing express, checking passing trains, and even serving as a crossing watchman in the village. After a fire in an adjacent building engulfed the station on March 24, 1923, her temporary office was a baggage car on the siding, and she drew up the plans for the new station with the exact features she wanted. In September 1939 she traveled through the East, attended the World's Fair in New York City, and appeared on a radio broadcast of Ripley's Believe it or Not with the theme "Ladies Holding Men's Jobs." She retired in June 1941 and moved to Danville, Indiana, after which Marcellus Herron, Maurice "Newt" Newtson, Chet Osborn, and T.R. Anderson served as station agents. Buckland was originally named Whitefeather for the Shawnee leader who had once lived at the site, and the village was renamed for Colonel Ralph Buckland in 1891 at the time of its incorporation because he is credited with helping bring the railroad there.