Palmetto is set to go back in time to bring the past into the present. An unsuccessful 2003 attempt to secure a federal grant to restore the historic 1914 train depot turned to gold recently when Palmetto got official word that the city had been awarded a $1 million Transportation Enhancement Grant to make the project a reality.

“The train depot being the center of the downtown area, obviously we’re happy about this, said Mayor Clark Boddie. “A lot of times the train depot is the first thing people see when they come to Palmetto. It’s been a priority for me and for the City Administrator for quite a few years to secure the funds so we could finally do the restoration of the depot. And I think once it’s finished everybody in Palmetto will be proud of it.

Boddie and City Administrator Bill Shell said plans call for restoring the interior of the depot to its original style. Areas of main concern, they said, are the floors and the roof, where much of the deterioration has occurred over the years. Interior walls, they said are in relatively good shape. The 3-1 matching grant will be set up on a cost reimbursement schedule, with federal funds totaling $750,000 and Palmetto funding the remaining $250,000.

“The grant calls for us doing the expenditures and being reimbursed,” Boddie said. “Out of the $1 million grant. the Dept. of Transportation will reimburse us the $750,000. So the city will contribute the other 25 percent. The goal is to spend the million dollars very wisely on the project and get the depot back to its original state and turn it into a historic learning museum.”

The 1914 depot originally served both passengers and freight. Beginning in 1966, the depot served as city hall and housed the Public Works Department as well as Fire and Police. The Police Department moved in 2001, the last of the city offices housed at the facility.

When originally constructed, the depot consisted of two buildings with a common roof line. The depot was modified by enclosing the area between the two buildings and constructing a 375 square-foot area on the north side of the building for use as the city jail. The restoration will return everything to its original state, along with roof and interior work, upgrading restrooms, restoring brick and trim and repairing awnings.

Long an objective to restore the historic depot, plans include far more than the vital restoration project, said Boddie and Shell. Plans call for using the past to help educate future generations.

“The city’s vision of exactly what the facility would be used for is a historic learning museum,” Boddie explained. “This is something that, when restored back to its original state, a lot of the older citizens of Palmetto and a lot of the new folks coming to town can see some of the history of Palmetto. Similar to some of the things located in the old Campbell County Courthouse in Fairburn, this is something we would actually like to do with this facility.”

The learning museum will likely include items of local interest. Donations or loans of historic items for display will be a prominent feature of the museum.

“A lot of families in the past have brought things to the city to display, but we had no place for display them,” Boddie said. “So we want people to be able to see how the city was when it was founded in the 1800s all the way up to where it is today.

Bill Shell is far more than Palmetto’s City Administrator. In his youthful 68 years, nearly all his life has been spent in the South Fulton town. Shell is a part of the city’s history, like his father, who was also city administrator.

“Back in 1969 we had a volunteer fire department located here in the depot. I was on that fire department,” Shell explained. “There used to be an open space where the passenger depot and the freight depot met. That’s where we used to park the fire truck because we didn’t have a fire station. The fire station and the police department were located here in the depot. There’s a switch that’s still here in the building where, if we got a call about a fire, we flipped the switch and it activated the siren at the red light downtown. It would go off and that’s what would get the volunteers here to get the fire truck.”

A bit further back in time as a young boy, Shell learned to roller skate on the cement pavilion on the north end of the depot, the area that was later enclosed and became the city jail.

“We plan to take that back off as part of the restoration. There was a pavilion there with an overhang which was big enough to skate on. When I was a little boy, Mr. Chandler was in charge of the depot, all of us kids would come here and bring our roller skates and skate on the cement floor under the pavilion. Mr. Chandler would come out and check on us to make sure we didn’t get under the train,” Shell said, smiling.

With the grant to restore the depot secured, it is only a matter of time before the memories of the past merge with the interests of current residents and visitors who want to catch a glimpse of the history of Palmetto.

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