By Jim Hannaford

The train depot in Foley was the first stop for many of the city’s earliest residents and visitors. It’s still a great place to start when you want to learn about Foley’s history and the people who have made the place what it is.

Standing near the junction of U.S. 59 and U.S. 98 (which locals also know as McKenzie Street and Laurel Avenue), the 115-year-old structure stands like a wooden cornerstone at Heritage Park. Built in 1909 to replace an original depot destroyed by fire, this handsome and historic building spent over 20 years as a storage facility in nearby Magnolia Springs. Dangerously close to becoming derelict and forgotten, it was returned to its rightful place of honor in 1995, carefully restored and reopening as a museum three years later.

"The city was fortunate that businessman John Snook, who owned the phone company, realized the importance of the historic depot," says Foley Marketing Director LaDonna Hinesley. "When he paid $1 for the building and moved it to Magnolia Springs, people questioned his sanity. He privately told friends that one day the city would want to buy it back, they just didn't know it yet. And he was right."

And there's no question that the city has put it to good use.

"Today, the building showcases photos and exhibits that tell the story of the city," LaDonna says. "It's one of the oldest buildings in town. And, how many cities have a historic building that overlooked the town, was moved to the country, and later returned to its original location?"

Once inside, visitors to the museum learn how the city came to be when a Chicago investor named John B. Foley purchased more than 40,000 acres and sold it for development as farms and homesteads. He needed a railroad to help deliver the new residents, and at the time the Louisville & Nashville Railroad ran only as far south as Bay Minette. That final 37 miles of track was a lifeline for the future of the city, which is now approaching an official population of 25,000.

Adjacent to the museum is the popular Model Train Exhibit, an elaborate setup owned by the city and operated by the Caboose Club, a dedicated group of volunteers.  But while trains are a huge part of Foley’s past, so are planes. A newly expanded exhibit at the museum highlights the community’s importance in naval aviation history.

Many of our fighter pilots in World War II got their training at Barin Field, which was an auxiliary training center for Pensacola Naval Air Station. Located on Foley’s east side (and bisected today by the Foley Beach Express), the historic airfield opened almost exactly a year after the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

If you think Foley is booming these days, you should have seen it back then.

“To give you an idea, they had 2,000 people assigned to the base and Foley had a population at the time of about 800,” says Foley Marketing Communications Manager Guy Busby. “It had a huge impact on the city throughout the 1940s and indeed the 1950s. A great many of the pilots who fought in the Pacific trained here or in Pensacola. They would come here and train and learn how to fly and how to land on aircraft carriers. It was a very intensive training program.”

Like John Foley, quite a few of them were enchanted with the area and saw lots of potential. As one of the museum exhibits details, many stayed here and ended up raising families. Guy can speak on that subject from personal experience—his father-in-law, the late Albert J. Rea, was one of them.

“He was from Canton, Ohio, graduated from Ohio State, got his Officer Candidate Commission, and got sent here in the 1950s,” says Guy. “He married a young lady named Joan Carter and they ended up getting married and having three kids. My wife, Liz, is the oldest of those three.”

The khaki jacket his father-in-law wore as a young officer is on display, hanging not far from a WAVES uniform that belonged to a chaplain's assistant named Jane Smith Peterson Coleman. She was originally from Louisiana, ended up running a local marine and hardware store with her husband, and also taught Sunday School. Many more artifacts and mementos, along with enlarged black-and-white photos and descriptive narrative texts, help to flesh out this pivotal period in Foley’s history.

The exhibit on Barin Field opened on Dec. 5, which Guy notes was the 82nd anniversary of its opening in 1942. City officials hope to eventually recognize the naval aviation base with a separate museum of its own, one that's large enough to accommodate a WWII-era trainer plane that the city acquired in October.  The 83-year-old yellow bi-plane, a Naval Aircraft Factory N3N, is currently housed at Foley Municipal Airport and is flown twice a month to maintain its airworthy status.

Between 1942 and 1958, as many as 400 trainer planes filled the skies over Foley. Old-timers in the area certainly remember the buzzing of activity at the old naval training base, but it’s often news to younger generations. This revived attention toward Barin Field and its importance to Foley’s past came about partly because of a National Park Service program that designates a World War II Heritage City in each state.

“It recognizes what that city did during World War II and what it has done since then to remember the sacrifices made during the war and the contributions that the citizens made to the home front and their community,” says Guy. “We found out about this program in 2023, that they were looking for a city in Alabama, so we applied for it, and it’s a great honor.”