The Oxford-University Depot

Mail for the university post office came through here, and William Faulkner, while postmaster, retrieved the sacks with help from his brother Murry. He and his friend Phil Stone also boarded trains at the depot for Memphis. Engineer Casey Jones ran trains through Oxford in the 1890s, his whippoorwill whistle known in town, though he died elsewhere, at Vaughan in 1900. During Prohibition men quietly bought liquor from passing trains. The Illinois Central ended passenger service in 1941, the southbound track was abandoned in 1982, and the university bought the building in 1983.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Lyceum and the Circle, University of Mississippi — 0.5 mi
  The 1848 Greek Revival building at the center of the Ole Miss campus, where federal marshals held off a mob on 30 September 1962 and James Meredith registered the next morning.
• Oxford Square — 0.5 mi
  The courthouse square laid out in 1837 on land bought from a Chickasaw woman, rebuilt after the 1864 burning and home to Square Books and a memorial to Lafayette County's lynching victims.
• Rowan Oak — 0.6 mi
  William Faulkner's Greek Revival house in Oxford, bought in 1930 and kept by the University of Mississippi, with the outline of A Fable still written on his study wall.
• Sardis Lake and Dam — 16 mi
  A flood-control lake on the Little Tallahatchie, built from 1930s labor and a dredge named Pontotoc, with a dam that for years was the largest earth-filled dam in the world.

More markers nearby

• Hilgard Cut — 0.2 mi
• Theora Hamblett House — 0.3 mi
• Freedmen Town — 0.3 mi
• "Dead House" — 0.3 mi