HAMLET — Artist Max Dowdle wrapped up the Orange Blossom Special mural last week, just in time for the Seaboard Festival — and the 100th anniversary of its first run.
The famed passenger train connected New York to Florida, during the winter months, covering a stretch of more than 1,300 miles along the East Coast.
According to transportationhistory.org, the Orange Blossom Special made its first run in 1925, pulling out of New York at 9 a.m. Nov. 21 and arriving in West Palm Beach 30 minutes shy of 36 hours.
The train traveled along the Pennsylvania Railroad and Potomac Railroad before joining the Seaboard Air Line Railroad to finish out the southern leg of the route.
The editor of New Yorker magazine reportedly called the OBS “the most luxurious winter-season train ever devised by man.”
In the late ‘30s, Ervin Rouse wrote and recorded “Orange Blossom Special” as a fiddle tune, which has become a bluegrass standard and has been covered by the likes of Bill Monroe, Charlie Daniels and Johnny Cash. The song was also featured in “Smokey and the Bandit.”
The train ran until 1953, aside from a suspension of service during World War II.
Angie Averitte — treasurer of Hamlet Historic Depot, the nonprofit that helps maintain the city-owned site — told the RO in February that the mural has been on the Depot’s wish list of about 30 ideas for several years, but the projects were prioritized.
The mural on the side of the former Birmingham Drug building is similar to a print of the Orange Blossom Special at the Hamlet Depot that hangs in the office of the Visitors Center.
Corporate sponsors of the wall art include REV Federal Credit Union, Duke Energy and American Woodmark.
“We…honor our history, our rail history…that’s a part of history that’s gone and will never come back,” Averitte said. “At the end of the day, we want to preserve the legacy of the Seaboard.”
The Seaboard Festival returns to Hamlet on Saturday, with opening ceremonies scheduled for 9 a.m. at the stage by the Depot. The annual Seaboard Festival 5K starts an hour earlier.
Click here to read more about the Seaboard Festival.
Dowdle is director of NC Public Art and plans to paint murals in all 100 of North Carolina’s counties.
According to the NC Public Art website, murals have already been completed in several counties, not including Richmond: Havelock (Craven); Chapel Hill and Hillsborough (Orange); Spring Lake (Cumberland); Apex and Raleigh (Wake); Morehead City (Carteret); Durham (Durham); Roxboro (Person).
The Orange Blossom Special makes the third mural painted in Hamlet within the past several years.
In 2019, Scotland County artist Stuart Carmichael painted a mural near the Hamlet Senior Center, with a last-minute addition featuring the likenesses of late City Council member Joe Robinson and his grandchildren.
The following year, Scott Nurkin completed a sizable likeness of jazz legend John Coltrane on Raleigh Street, who was born just blocks away.
Local artist Daniel Webb has also painted several murals across the county, including downtown Rockingham, Ellerbe and Rockingham Dragway. The RO will feature Webb in a future story.
