In 1885, Brooksville had a population of 500 and depended on horse-drawn wagons and stagecoaches to move goods and passengers, but four businessmen formed the Brooksville Railroad Association and paid the Florida Southern Railway Company $20,000 to bring the railroad to town. The 120x21-foot depot, built of local cypress, cedar, and yellow pine, had a 40-foot covered back dock and a telegraph office, and although it began with one track, tracks later occupied both sides of the building. In 1892, the Henry Plant Railroad System acquired the Florida Southern Railway, and over the years various railroads owned the depot as use gradually declined. By 1971, all tracks were gone, CSX closed the building, and the empty depot deteriorated for more than twenty years, with homeless people using the back dock as a sleeping platform. In 1986, the Hernando County Historical Museum Association bought the land for $12,600, CSX donated the 101-year-old building for use as a museum, and volunteers, community organizations, and grants completed its restoration before it opened to the public in 1992. The railroad's arrival transformed isolated Brooksville during the Jim Crow era into a center of activity for blacks and whites alike, expanded markets for lumber, turpentine, citrus, phosphate, and livestock, sped the delivery of merchandise, books, and mail, created jobs, encouraged hotels, boarding houses, and restaurants, and made travel easier, including excursions on "The Brooksville Short" between Brooksville and Croom near the Withlacoochee River. By 1933, automobiles had replaced passenger train service, freight hauling continued until the late 1960s, and the depot survived as a historical museum and Florida Heritage Site.