Cookeville Depot Museum

Until the railroad came, the Upper Cumberland was a long haul from anywhere. Alexander Crawford's Nashville and Knoxville line reached Cookeville in July 1890, and Jere Baxter's Tennessee Central carried it on, east to the Southern tracks at Harriman in 1898 and west to Nashville and, by 1904, to the Illinois Central at Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Baxter raised money by selling bonds to counties and saved money by using convict labor. For the region's farmers the line meant markets in Nashville and Knoxville.

The brick depot on West Broad Street dates to 1909 and replaced one built in 1890. It is one of three brick depots the Tennessee Central built. Passenger service ended in 1955. The railroad went out of business in 1968, the L&N ran freight until 1974, and the city bought the depot the next year and restored it.

It is on the National Register and now a museum of the Tennessee Central, with a model of Cookeville's west side as it looked in the summer of 1955. In the yard outside stand a 1913 Baldwin steam engine and two cabooses. The depot is the heart of the town's historic west side, and the blocks around it are worth a short walk.