Burgaw Station was a stop on the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, the rail line known as the “Lifeline of the Confederacy,” which by 1864 served as Gen. Robert E. Lee’s main supply route for the Army of Northern Virginia. The line carried equipment and weapons smuggled through the Union naval blockade from Wilmington, North Carolina, to the front in Virginia, and trains sometimes stopped at Burgaw Station for wood, water, passengers, and mail. Built about 1850 as part of an improvement project on what was then called the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad, later renamed the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad in 1855, the station was tied to several wartime figures and events. William Shepperd Ashe, president of the railroad early in the war, was killed in a train accident while traveling from Wilmington to his home four miles south of Burgaw. By 1863, Col. Sewell L. Fremont, for whom Fremont Street in Burgaw was named, served as superintendent of the railroad. Federal cavalry raiders burned part of the depot in 1862-1863. After the Confederates evacuated Wilmington late in February 1865, Union prisoners of war were temporarily held at Burgaw Station before being paroled on the rail line near the Northeast Cape Fear River as part of a general exchange program. During negotiations, the Burgaw depot telegraph connected Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, headquartered nearby, with Richmond and Raleigh. Today Burgaw Station is one of only two remaining antebellum railroad stations in North Carolina.