Collinwood, TN

Collinwood took shape when the first Tennessee Western Railroad train arrived in December 1913. The line was built to move lumber and serve the iron industry, and the new town quickly filled in with a drugstore, grocery, hardware store, feed store, boarding house, bank, and brick plant. Collinwood’s broad plain, ringed by low hills and hollows, made room for a railroad settlement while streams on either side led toward Shoal Creek and Indian Creek. The town’s name came from the Collinwood Land Company, which laid out the streets.

The railroad no longer sets the whole economy, but its imprint remains in the Collinwood Depot, one of the last major pieces of the Tennessee Western line. Today the city serves as a small Wayne County center for nearby farms, timber country, schools, churches, and local businesses. Roads carry residents toward Waynesboro and other regional services, then bring them back to the same plain where the town began. Collinwood’s story is a familiar southern railroad story with a specific local texture: timber shipments, iron ambitions, storefronts built from local brick, and a depot that keeps the first train close to memory.