Note: Bluffton sixth graders in the 1953-54 school year (graduating class of 1960) created a booklet titled "The Bluffton Story." The following article is part of that booklet, which is now in the history collection at the Bluffton Public Library. This series continues each week on the Icon.
By Vera Basinger and Doris Ann Niswander
The Nickel Plate Railroad or Lake Erie and Western as it was called in the beginning did more to influence the direction in which Bluffton was to grow than any other factor of the town's history. IN 1872, Bluffton's Main Street was Riley. The business section and the homes of the town were located on this busy street. The town was extending along Riley Creek and chances are Riley Street would be the main street of the community today if the railroad would have located its depot in another location.

The people of Bluffton were eager to have the advantages that a railroad would offer them. They raised the unheard of sum of $20,000 and entrusted it to the Untied State Senator Calvin Brice, then an attorney of Lima, Ohio, who organized a company and bought stock of the railroad.

Judge Eaton donated land to the railroad for their track and depot. The railroad then brought its line through Bluffton and built its depot on the donated land where it still stands today.

It must have seemed to the people as if the mountain would have to move to Mohamed as the depot was far in the country from busy little Riley Street.

Business places, eager to be nearer to the new means of transportation, moved slowly away from Riley Street until the business section of the town ended in its present location.

The railroad led to other businesses as hotel and livery stables for the salesmen and others that found occasion to visit Bluffton.