In the summer of 1887, confirmation that the Mobile and West Alabama Railroad would follow the Choctaw Corner route led to construction of a new town at the headwaters of Bassett Creek, named Thomasville in honor of General Samuel Thomas, president of the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad Company. The town grew rapidly into a regional commercial hub, shipping lumber, timbers, forest products, and hundreds of bales of cotton by rail each year, while families moved in and schools and places of worship were built. That growth was sharply interrupted in the summer of 1889, when an epidemic later called Thomasville Fever almost depopulated the town, causing many families to leave and businesses to close temporarily. After the epidemic passed, Thomasville quickly resumed growing, but in 1899 fire destroyed the entire business section, wiping out 23 wooden structures, a hotel, 700 bales of cotton, and one residence. The town then required brick construction in the business district, rebuilt, and much of the downtown stands as rebuilt.