Merrellton, also known as East and West Junction, Junction, and Merrelton, is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Calhoun County, Alabama Calhoun County is a county in the east central part of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population was 116,441. Its county seat is Anniston. It is named in honor of John C. Calhoun, a US Senator from South Carolina. Cal ...

, United States. Merrellton is located on

Alabama State Route 21 State Route 21 (SR 21) is a state highway that extends from the Florida state line, near Atmore in Escambia County to Piedmont in Calhoun County. The route travels almost the entire length of the state from the northeast to the so ...

, north of Anniston.

History

A post office was established in 1884 and was named Merrill, after the daughter of the postmistress, Adelia E. Frank. A school was established in the early 1900s. The post office closed in 1923, and the school closed in 1927. In 1929, a tornado struck an African-American church which was used as a school, demolishing the building and killing five pupils. Merrellton was a historic junction for two now-abandoned railway lines, the East & West Railroad and the Southern Railway. In 1996, the city of

Jacksonville Jacksonville ( ) is the most populous city proper in the U.S. state of Florida, located on the Atlantic coast of North Florida, northeastern Florida. It is the county seat of Duval County, Florida, Duval County, with which the City of Jacksonv ...

acquired from the

Norfolk Southern Railway The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The comp ...

the track bed of the former Southern Railway which passed through Merrellton. The track bed was used to complete a portion of the Chief Ladiga Trail, Alabama's first

rail trail A rail trail or railway walk is a shared-use path on a Right of way#Rail right of way, railway right of way. Rail trails are typically constructed after a railway has been abandoned and the track has been removed but may also share the rail corr ...

Notable people

* Herman Clarence Nixon,

political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

and member of the

Southern Agrarians The Southern Agrarians were twelve American Southerners who wrote an agrarian literary manifesto in 1930. They and their essay collection, ''I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition'', contributed to the Southern Renaissance, ...

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Alabama Unincorporated communities in Calhoun County, Alabama