Dickson, Tennessee grew from the town plot of Smeedsville, established in 1862 by the Union Army as Union forces completed the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad from Kingston Springs to Johnsonville. The town had three north-south streets and one east-west street, relinquished its charter in 1883, and was chartered again by the State of Tennessee on April 22, 1899, when its name was changed to Dickson. From 1899 to 1999, Dickson saw steady civic and commercial development, including railroad overpass and underground permission on Charlotte Street, board sidewalks, a water and electric plant, street lights, public school land, dust control on Main Street, the Graystone Hotel, Walnut Street Church of Christ, electric meters, the first Dickson County Fair, a toll road to Charlotte, a town speed limit, a four-year high school, house numbering for mail delivery, the First Methodist Church, road and street construction, a sewer plant, radios, automobiles, a fire engine, Boy Scouts, talking movies, the War Memorial Building, City Lake, a federal savings and loan, a downtown U.S. Post Office, night football lights, a National Guard Armory, dual telephones, wartime blackouts, postwar homebuilding and subdivisions, parking meters, natural gas, railroad bridges, banks, a health department, a municipal building, radio station WKDN, mercury streetlights, a hospital, civic clubs, city-limit expansion, direct long-distance dialing, a highway bypass, vocational and high schools, an industrial park, parks and recreation centers, the county library, the Greater Dickson Gas Authority, recovery from a great ice storm, a golf club, an inn and convention center at Montgomery Bell State Park, and the Renaissance Center. Its population was 1,363 around 1899 and 12,500 around 1999.