City of Goldsboro to Railroads: “Drop Dead!”
The “night the tracks came up” is a great local legend, and for the most part true, but it is only a fraction of the whole story
Goldsboro owes its very existence to the railroad but by the beginning of the twentieth century, the relationship became frayed as citizens protested the noise, smell, and traffic of train cars running up and down Center Street. By 1926 the situation had deteriorated to the point that the city alderman secretly instructed the removal of the tracks on the night of April 2.
