Rail Lines Connect

"At first it was simply a place where the railroads crossed," one laconic commentator recalled Sanford at its moment of birth, however, adjacent landowners, Jordan Wicker, Augustus W. Steele, John B. Matthews, Sr., and the McIver brothers seized the opportunity to develop a town by laying out approximately 225 acres into streets and lots and sold them at public auction. The town was named Sanford in honor of Charles O. Sanford, the R&A engineer responsible for the construction of the railroad through Lee County.

Downtown Sanford grew rapidly at first, a result of its short-lived status as the terminus of the R&A line. One account puts the 1871 population as high as 285, when the town swelled with railroad workers and would-be capitalists. Among the first buildings constructed in the town were the depot and depot agent's residence. The latter, better known as the Railroad House, stood on the north corner of Hawkins and Charlotte avenues across from another early building, Brown's Tavern. The first occupants of the house were depot agent W. T. Tucker, later Sanford's first mayor, and his wife, Inder Tucker, who conducted the Sanford Institute in the house "for the tuition of young ladies and small boys" from 1872 until the late 1890s. Aside from its educational function, the Institute instilled a modicum of gentility in the raw town. It also served a promotional purpose. An advertisement for the school assured prospective customers that "parents wishing to send their children to a quiet and healthy location cannot find a place more so than Sanford." The idyllic Sanford portrayed by the Tuckers bore little resemblance to the "straggling village, ugly, dirty and uninviting" recalled by others, with its muddy streets, groggeries, and contaminated wells.

After the initial flush of development, however, Sanford stagnated. When it was incorporated on February 11, 1874, the town's population had dwindled to 200. By 1880, the population had risen only slightly to 236 persons - 126 whites and 110 African Americans. Some blamed the town's failure to develop a stable community life on the ready availability of “spirituous liquors". Liquor sales were prohibited by the act of incorporation, but the problem persisted for years afterward.

Downtown Sanford was basically a working community of merchants, tradesmen, and laborers. The town fathers included Robert M. Brown, the postmaster and a leading merchant; George C. Newby, a physician and one of the town’s first commissioners; and Wilber C. Page, the proprietor of the town hotel. The Rev. Peter J. Klapp ministered to the town's spiritual needs, and Aurelia C. Weatherspoon, age nineteen, taught school. The town's businessmen included merchants Lodwick T. Brown, William T. Buchanan, John M. Stephens, and Thomas D. Watson; lawyer Thomas M. Cross; carpenters Henry A. Bland, Jack Miller, and David W. Womack; and gravestone maker George A. Davis. Wilber Page and his wife Fanny ran the Page Hotel, also known as the "Waffle House" for its house specialty. In 1899, the Page Hotel (which probably stood on South Moore Street) contained twenty-three rooms, “tastefully and cozily furnished" parlors, and a dining room table that could seat thirty diners. Downtown Sanford's early business life revolved around the Mclvers general store.

Although McIvers may not have been the town's first store, it was for many years Sanford's leading mercantile emporium, and the list of individuals associated with it reads like a roster of the principal merchants and landowners in the Sanford vicinity. The original store building, a "rough plank structure" on the south corner of Chatham and McIver streets, was established in 1873 by local planter M. Henry McIver and businessman D. H. Marsh. John D. McIver joined the business at an early date, and it may have been his cotton gin that operated in conjunction with the store in 1877. About 1883, the firm moved across McIver Street to a "large and beautiful Store house".

The construction of the Raleigh & Augusta line also had a tremendous impact on the expansion of the lumber industry, as lumber speculators descended on the southern Sandhills portion of the county buying up huge timber tracts. In 1883, a Raleigh newspaper declared that Moore County (which Lee County formed the eastern tip) "exports more dollars worth of natural products, perhaps than any other county in the state." Temporary lumber camps were established throughout the county; the remains of one survive today at the intersection of the Seaboard Coastline and Lower Moncure Road (SR 1002) near Blacknel.