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The Franklin airport, dedicated in 1941, was used by the Navy during World War II.
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Main Street during a parade, 1928. Note the paved street and th mix of cars and horse-and-ox-drawn vehicles.
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The Franklin Post Office, 1916. Note the unpaved street and the street light in the upper right-hand corner.
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The first rural mail carriers from the Franklin Post Office on their motorcycles, 1920.
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An Albemarle Steam Navigation Company boat at its Franklin wharf, 1900. The steamboat line found it impossible to fight the combination of paved roads, automobiles, buses, and trucks and closed its doors in 1928.
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Rawls Motor Company Garage, 1924. Garages, gas stations, and automobile dealerships replaced livery stables and blacksmith shops in the '10s and '20s.
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The last Camp tugboat, the ???, on the Blackwater River, 1999.
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This gas station, ca. 1925, was photographed in the '40s.
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The paving of Routes 1, 35, and 58, the "ridge road" from Richmond through Franklin to Norfolk, was completed in 1922. In 1924 a bus line stated a daily service from Norfolk to Richmond on this road.
 
Between 1907 and 1930 Franklin witnessed a revolution in transportation as gasoline-powered vehicles replaced the horse and buggy and steam-powered transportations. Even as Franklin benefited from a boom in buggy making during the first decade of the twentieth century, the automobile came to Franklin. In 1913 Franklin's first car dealerships opened, and by 1919 cars outnumbered buggies on Franklin streets. Franklin adopted the Town Manager form of government in 1922. Soon after, the Town paved its streets with concrete or ??? stone to adapt to the Age of Gasoline. Hard surfaced streets, sidewalks, and curbs replaced dirt and gravel streets, hitching posts, and watering troughs. The Camp mill continued to use the river and the railroads survived as freight carriers, but the character of Franklin's future development - though retarded by the depression and World War II - would be determined by the automobile. After the war homes and businesses were built farther and farther from the old business district.
"Camp tugboats continued to pull barges of North Carolina logs upriver each week to Franklin [after 1928]. A bridge operator still controlled th draw at South Quay on the Blackwater River so the Union Camp tug could go downriver on Sunday to load its barges and come back to the mill the following Friday. It was a Franklin ritual."
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