In 1890, the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railroad was extended westward from Salisbury. About six miles from that city, the line crossed a country road where there was a store and a Colonial dwelling. All around were farms and woodland. Here the builders of the railroad designated a shipping point and named it Hebron. Five years later, a lumber manufacturing plant was located there, and a hamlet began to develop.
The railroad collected products from miles around Hebron and carried them to the populous areas to the north and west. Proximity to Salisbury and water transportation gave the burgeoning community still greater importance and impetus for growth. Shirt factories, canneries, a flour mill, and other industrial activities sprang up and attracted workers to the town. By the late 1920s, Hebron was a town with a flourishing commercial life and about 1,100 inhabitants. Surrounding the town were prolific truck farms. In 1927, Hebron’s packing house shipped 420,000 cantaloupes in forty refrigerated rail cars. Nearby poultry enterprises and Guernsey milk herds of national repute added to the prosperity.
