The Mississippi Central Railroad reached Holly Springs in 1856 through the urging of Holly Springs attorney Harvey W. Walter. Situated on the main route between New Orleans, Chicago, and New York, and halfway between New Orleans and St. Louis, the town had one of the most spacious depots on the line. On December 20, 1862, Griffith's Texas troopers rode through the Federal infantry camp east of the railroad, raced to the depot, and continued west on Depot Street, now Van Dorn Avenue, to the Union infantry camp at the Town Square. That night, after the Confederates had left Holly Springs, Union commander Colonel Robert C. Murphy reported that he had ordered his scattered forces to report to the depot and was preparing to barricade it with cotton bales, with two trains nearly ready to move, when the Texans charged into the depot and his infantry camp. As he tried to escape by the rear of the depot to join his infantry forces, he was captured by cavalry. Van Dorn's men then burned the warehouses, armory, machine shops, octagonal roundhouse, and depot, emptied the boxcars and burned their contents, and tore up the railroad tracks. In 1865 the Mississippi Central rebuilt the front of the partially destroyed depot, and in 1886 remodeled the building to include 20 bedrooms and a 125-seat dining room.