*1900 merged into Seaboard Air Line Railway.

+ 1894 - Leased the South Bound Railroad.

A series of railroad consolidations in northern Florida culminated in the establishment of the Florida Railway and Navigation Company in 1884. In November of 1885, the FR&N entered receivership but continued to expand, adding lines in the Jacksonville area and a connector to Plant City. In 1888, financier W. Bayard Cutting and other investors purchased the FR&N and reorganized it in the following year as the Florida Central and Peninsular Railway Company.

The new company, which operated tracks from the Atlantic at Fernandina to the Gulf coast at Cedar Key and St. Marks, quickly expanded south to Tampa and other areas of central Florida. It also began looking north to Georgia and beyond.

In 1894, the FC&P arranged a lease of the brand-new South Bound Railroad, a 136-mile line between Savannah, GA and Columbia, SC - completed in 1891. To connect this line with its Florida lines, the FC&P built a new 138-mile Savannah-Jacksonville line through Georgia’s coastal counties. When it opened in January, 1894, a 274-mile line from Jacksonville, FL to Columbia, SC was created.

In 1899, the Williams and Middendorf group of Richmond and Baltimore purchased the FC&P and made it part of the Seaboard Air Line Railway in 1900.

Towns on Route (in SC):

Camden

Lugoff (1900)

Jeffers (1898) > Blaney (1900) > Elgin (1962)

Jacobs (1901) > Pontiac (1915)

Dentsville (1901)

College Place (1900s)

Survey Place (1900s)

Columbia

Dixiana (1890s)

Schumperts (1896)

Gaston

Swansea

Woodford

North

Livingston

Silver Springs > Neeses #2 (1898)

Norway

Willow (aka Sweden Station)

Denmark

Govan

Olar

Roby (1890s)

Schofield (1909)

Ulmers

Sycamore

Fairfax

Gifford

Luray

Estill

Scotia

Clyo

Garnett

Rincon

SC/GA State Line