Marion Station, Maryland
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Marion Station, Maryland Marion |
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| Unincorporated community | |
View looking west on Crisfield-Marion Road
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 Marion Station
Marion Station
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| Coordinates: 38°2′21″N 75°46′15″W / 38.03917°N 75.77083°W | |
| Country |
 United States
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| State |
 Maryland
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| County | Somerset |
| Elevation | 2 m (7 ft) |
| Time zone | Eastern (EST) (UTC-5) |
| • Summer (DST) | EDT (UTC-4) |
| ZIP code | 21838 |
| Area code(s) | 410 & 443 |
| GNIS feature ID | 590741 |
Marion Station, also known as Marion, is an unincorporated community in Somerset County, Maryland, United States. It is located at the northern intersection of Maryland Route 413 and Maryland Route 667. After the arrival of the Pennsylvania Railroad arm known as the "Eastern Shore Railroad" toward Crisfield in 1866, Marion was locally hailed as the "strawberry capital of the world". After the trains stopped coming it has gone into decline, with some sources even hailing it as a ghost town.
Marion Station was once known as Coulbourne Creek until the Pennsylvania Railroad line known as the Crisfield Secondary Branch of the Eastern Shore Railroad reached Crisfield. A train station was built in the town thanks to John C. Horsey, who paid for the right-of-way for the train and the station house. The town was then renamed Marion; the name was taken from Horsey's daughter. Because of the railroad, Marion Station experienced an economic boom and became the world's leader in strawberry production, utilizing the railroad to ship strawberries across the country. Large trains came to Marion's train station every day to collect strawberries, pulling loaded ice-refrigeration cars out to sell them in large cities. The town saw the construction of several businesses along its Main Street (now Maryland Route 667) corridor: a movie house, grocery store, blacksmith shop, pharmacy, a school. A garage was also built, as was a bar and a pharmacy. Marion Station also possessed the first hospital ever built in Somerset County, and the town grew to the point where it needed its own police force.
After several decades, however, the town began to slip into decline. This occurred in the 1950s, when the trains stopped coming to Marion for strawberries. The railroad line was officially abandoned on April 1, 1976 when Conrail was established, and the steel rails were removed from the railroad bed later; however, the railroad was supplanted earlier by the construction of Maryland Route 413's current alignment. Many of the old buildings have been torn down or are now vacant. The train station still stands in the town. In 1997, a revitalization project began to restore the building. It was reopened in the early 2000s as the new Accohannock Indian Museum, containing various relics from the time when Marion Station was a bustling city. The fire department was moved across MD 667 to where it currently stands; the old building is now a store. The former pharmacy is located on the short stub of Charles Cannon Road between MD 413 and 667, and has been boarded up for decades. Even the two gas stations located in the town have both closed; the last one closed in the early 2000s.
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