Creek Indians lived in this area some 200 years before trains began stopping here in 1866 to leave supplies for nearby farmer William Larkin Williams. Workers who first came to build the railroads were drawn by vast longleaf pine forests and rich farmland, and as settlement grew around Williams's supply stop, the community became known as Williams Station. Saw mills rose in the timber-rich area, and abundant resources for lumber and turpentine brought prosperity well before the land was cleared for cotton. In 1876, William Marshall Carney moved to the area from Mobile, and during the next two decades Williams Station grew along with his business interests. His philanthropic gifts helped build a school and three local churches. Residents came to feel the town deserved a more refined name than that of a railway whistle stop, and in 1897 it was renamed Atmore in honor of Charles Pawson Atmore, a friend of Carney and general passenger agent for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in Louisville, Kentucky. Town leaders had wanted to rename the community Carney, but another nearby settlement in Baldwin County already bore that family name. There is no record that Charles Pawson Atmore ever visited the town named for him. On May 23, 1907, Atmore became an incorporated municipality.