The Summerdale area was settled in the early 1850's by several families of Scotch and Irish descent. By 1900, the town had a church, a saw mill, a turpentine business, and a hotel, and many families of different nationalities had moved there, building homes and clearing timberland for farming. The first train came to town on May 11, 1905, allowing crops to be shipped great distances by rail, and the town then grew with another hotel, a canning factory, a general merchandise store, and a post office. Agriculture flourished with crops of cotton, potatoes, peanuts, and tobacco, and many of the original farms are still in production. A three-story tobacco barn built around 1909 still stands and was used to store high quality leaves for making cigars. By 1928, Summerdale became known as the Sunshine Town of Baldwin County and has kept that image through the years. In 1860, Robert Baker and Stephen Potts purchased 12,000 acres of land in Baldwin County that would become Magnolia Springs, Silverhill, Robertsdale, Surmmerdale, and Marlow, and they began a turpentine manufacturing business. Because turpentine was valuable for heat, medicinal uses, and sealing the hulls of ships, it was important to the area. During the midst of the War Between the States, workers dug deep trenches to save rosin from the turpentine still in case approaching Yankees set fire to the surrounding woods. The stored rosin was not discovered, and several years after the war it was dug up and sent to other local turpentine manufacturers. These trenches and the turpentine still were in the vicinity of the Old Dixie Road, now County Road 32, which was built by Confederate soldiers.