Drive past the corner of Avent Ferry Road and Ballentine Street on any ordinary Tuesday and there is nothing to slow you down. It is parking, sidewalk, the back side of Town Hall. Tonight is not an ordinary Tuesday. At 5:30, the town is unveiling a new historical marker on that exact corner, and the story behind it explains more about how downtown Holly Springs got its shape than the calendar of birthday events happening around it this week.
Here is the part most residents do not know: Holly Springs almost did not get a railroad at all.
The town that almost missed its own railroad
In the early 1890s, a north-south line through southern Wake County chose Apex over Holly Springs, leaving the town off the map for regional freight and passenger service. A local businessman named George Benton Alford, who wanted to turn the village into an industrial hub, ran his own newspaper largely to campaign for a line of Holly Springs' own. He got a charter in 1891 for what became the Cape Fear and Northern Railroad. Then nothing happened for years. Hard economic times stalled construction, and the legislature had to keep extending the charter just to keep the project alive on paper.
The break came in early 1898, when Durham capital, specifically Benjamin N. Duke and his brother-in-law John C. Angier, got behind the project. On July 27, 1898, Alford's daughter Mattie threw the first shovelful of dirt. The line opened for business in 1899 with a staff you could count on one hand: a station agent, an engineer, a fireman, a conductor, and three section hands. Trains left Angier at 8:30 in the morning, reached Holly Springs by 9:26, and connected with Seaboard's mail service running out of Raleigh. In 1904 the Dukes recharted it as the Durham and Southern Railroad and extended it from Apex to East Durham. The line eventually became part of the Seaboard Coast Line and later CSX, and it kept running trains through town until 1981.
The depot itself stood on Avent Ferry Road, behind where Town Hall sits now, which is the exact spot getting its marker tonight.
Why the marker is only going up now
Holly Springs has had scattered historical markers for years, at the Masonic Lodge on Raleigh Street, at the site of the old Mims Drugstore on Center Street, at the former grist mill that's now part of Bass Lake Park. What it did not have, until June 20, 2023, was a formal historical marker program with actual criteria for what earns a marker and who decides. Tonight's railroad marker is one of the first to go through that new, structured process rather than simply appearing because someone with pull wanted it there. In a town whose population barely broke 200 people in the 1890s and now measures growth in thousands of new rooftops a year, that shift matters. The town is only now getting around to writing its own official history down, on its own timeline, rather than letting it get preserved informally by whoever remembers.
The weekend built to explain the marker
The timing of what comes next is not an accident. Three days after Tuesday's ceremony, Saturday brings All Aboard, Holly Springs, a model train show at the Cultural Center running 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with train-themed crafts, historical photos of the line that used to run through town, and NCDOT's Be Rail Safe and Operation Lifesaver teams on hand. At 2 p.m., local train historian Rob Rousseau gives a presentation on the history of the line, the same history the marker commemorates. The same morning, the event doubles up with Sproutfest at the Farmers Market, complete with a touch-a-truck experience featuring fire and police vehicles. The sequencing gives adults the plaque on Tuesday and gives families a hands-on version of the same lesson four days later, which is a more deliberate approach to civic memory than most towns bother with.
The street getting a second life
The same Friday evening that Summer at the Springs kicks off on the Cultural Center lawn, with the All Y'all Country All-Stars performing from 6 to 9 p.m., the town is also running a Festival Street Design Lab at the same location. Planners want feedback on turning the stretch of Avent Ferry Road between West Ballentine and Center streets into a pedestrian-friendly festival street that can close to cars for events. It is worth sitting with the fact that this is the same road the trains once ran down. A century and a quarter ago, Avent Ferry Road carried freight and passengers into a town trying to build itself into an industrial center. Now the town is redesigning that same corridor to carry foot traffic for festivals and restaurant crowds instead. Mobility upgrades are backing the change too. GoTriangle added longer hours and an extra bus route to Holly Springs this August, and the Holly Springs Hopper ride-share service launched earlier this year, both aimed at getting people downtown without needing to park a car on Main Street.
Where the anniversary actually shows up on a plate
Downtown's first-ever Restaurant Week runs Friday, August 21 through Saturday, August 29, distinct from the broader Triangle-wide restaurant week that already includes Holly Springs restaurants every January alongside dozens of spots in Raleigh, Durham, Cary and Apex. This one is hyperlocal by design, confined to a walkable few blocks around Main Street. Mamma Mia Italian Bistro, Osha Thai Kitchen and Sushi, Pimiento Tea Room, Bass Lake Draft House, and Smashed Burgers and Cocktails at Town Hall Commons are all running specials through the week, a short walk from each other along and just off Main Street. The effect is that the town's 150th anniversary is not just a banner over Main Street, it is a reason to actually walk the two blocks between the marker's new home and a dinner table.
What comes after the balloons
The week closes on Saturday, August 29, with a 150th-themed Farmers Market at the Cultural Center, complete with swag drawings, history-related crafts, and antique farming equipment on display. Beyond this specific week, the Cultural Center announced on August 5 that it is opening its 20th-anniversary performance season this fall, with tickets already moving fast. The lineup includes the Southern Wake Players' production of "1776" running September 18 through 20, a mystery theater production called "A Haunting in Holly Springs" running October 2 through 4, a free 20th-anniversary concert from the all-volunteer Holly Springs Community Band on October 17, an Elvis tribute from Stephen Freeman on October 24, and a comedy night with John Floyd on November 6.
Here is the week at a glance, if you are planning around it:
- Tuesday, August 18, 5:30 p.m.: Historical marker unveiling at Avent Ferry Road and Ballentine Street
- Friday, August 21: Restaurant Week begins downtown, Summer at the Springs concert with All Y'all Country All-Stars, Festival Street Design Lab feedback session
- Saturday, August 22, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.: All Aboard model train show at the Cultural Center, with Sproutfest and touch-a-truck at the Farmers Market the same morning
- Saturday, August 29: Restaurant Week closes with a 150th-themed Farmers Market
None of this required a single new building. It required the town deciding, only in the last few years, to formally mark what already happened here and to build a week of programming that actually explains it rather than just celebrating a round number.
Weeks like this are the reason people who already live in Holly Springs tend to stay put. If you are curious what your own corner of that history is worth in today's market, Hodge & Kittrell Sotheby's International Realty can help you find out. Request Your Instant Home Valuation and see where you stand.
