Cameron Historic District

Carthage Street in Cameron forms a compact linear village of one- and two-story frame and brick houses, stores and churches, built mostly between about 1875 and 1925 along the railroad. The town grew after the arrival of the railroad in 1875, when merchants, railroad workers and farmers settled there, and it prospered through turpentine distilling, mercantile trade and dewberry farming. Dewberry shipments reached 60,000 to 90,000 crates a season in the 1910s and 1920s, and the town was called the largest dewberry market in the world. The district contains Victorian cottages, Queen Anne and Bungalow houses, the Presbyterian church of 1879 with its bell tower, and the Greenwood Inn with its double-tiered porch. The nomination emphasizes its many local merchants and physicians, the recurring Cameron door pattern, and the buildings' largely intact late-nineteenth-century character, which is why the district was listed.