Photo courtesy of Chelsea Historical Society and Museum.
The horse stables owned by Tarlton Andrew Eubanks near the train station in Chelsea. Visitors to Chelsea would rent horses and buggies after the got off of the train.
Chelsea is a booming area now, but its history is one of slow growth — fueled by timber and the railroad.
Chelsea’s origins trace back to the 1850s, when settlers began claiming land under the Homestead Act, said Jenny Mumpower, president of the Chelsea Historical Museum. What began as a remote mountain community of log cabins evolved over decades into a bustling town shaped by logging and rail access.
“Logging was a very big thing,” Mumpower said. “Sawmill logging actually helped out of the financial downfall from the Civil War.”
The boom in timber led to the arrival of the railroad in 1908 — Chelsea’s first true connection to the outside world.
Before the train, the area was known as Yellow Leaf Beat 8. The town center shifted frequently — from Pumpkin Swamp Road to Mount Calvary and eventually to the Narrows, which thrived during the New Deal era with grocery stores, taverns and even a hotel.
“Taverns and moonshine, especially through the Narrows,” were common during Prohibition, Mumpower said.
Among Chelsea’s pioneers was schoolteacher Lillian Moore, who rode a wild horse named Dan and taught reading to parents in the mountains. In the 1930s, she started an essay contest to send girls to college and helped secure Chelsea its first high school — campaigning alongside her son, who ran for the Shelby County school board.
“And he got on the school board, and he was the deciding vote to get Chelsea a high school, and that’s the school that’s on (Hwy.) 39 now,” she said.
