Ardmore, AL

Ardmore sits directly on the Alabama-Tennessee line, with its sister community of Ardmore, Tennessee continuing across the border. The town grew around the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which reached the area in the early 1910s. It first went by Austin, after the railroad official who selected the stop, before the railroad renamed it Ardmore for a Pennsylvania town. That origin still gives the town its north-south shape: State Highway 251 runs through town, while Highway 53 and Tennessee 7 mark the line and connect the two Ardmores.

Ardmore was incorporated in 1922 and remains a Limestone County town within the Huntsville-Decatur metropolitan area. Local institutions include Limestone County schools, Ardmore High School, and the Alabama Veterans Museum and Archives, housed in the old L&N freight depot on West Pryor Street. The Alabama side is the northernmost settlement in the state, so the town's everyday geography is unusual: one community name, two states, one state line running through Main Street, and a railroad history that predates the municipal boundary.