Broadnax grew into a community of mills, warehouses, homes, and stores after the Atlantic and Danville Railway was built in the 1890s. A combination freight and passenger station stood there in 1948, and until the 1950s rail shipments carried cotton bales, timber, and other commodities from the town. Nearby cucumbers and peaches were graded, packed, and shipped from Broadnax, and an old grading station at the Whitby Produce market remained an outlet for local produce. Before the boll weevil decimated the crop, cotton was a major regional product, and the Dugger Cotton Company operated the largest cotton market in Virginia. The Brodnax Cotton Mill, established in the 1930s, later became Brodnax Mills, producing specialty yarns from natural and synthetic materials. In the 1950s the town was bustling with a post office, hardware stores, three furniture stores, five grocery stores, a lunch room, numerous shops including a department store, clothing store, and two general merchandise stores, five gas stations, service businesses for plumbing and heating, shoe repair, and barbering, and a pulpwood center, sawmills, and a planing mill that supported the booming wood industry.