History of The Southern Museum

In 1972, after a court battle, the state of Georgia won the General locomotive back from the state of Tennessee. The General was taken to the Big Shanty Museum in Kennesaw, Georgia, located in the old Frey cotton gin, just yards from where it had been stolen 110 years earlier. The Big Shanty Museum, later called the Kennesaw Civil War Museum, showcased the General and the Civil War's Great Locomotive Chase with artifacts and a multimedia presentation.

In the mid-1990s, the city of Kennesaw acquired the Glover Locomotive Collection and planned to build a new, separate museum to house it. Originally, up to a million dollars of public funding was earmarked for the proposed train museum. In 1998, the Kennesaw Museum Foundation was formed to identify other sources of funding, and the city decided to combine the Glover locomotive with the General.

In 2000, the project was expanded once more to include a LIBRARY & ARCHIVES department, and storage in addition to the exhibit space. The Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History, one of the premier Atlanta tourism destinations, now houses three permanent collections: Railroads: Lifelines of the Civil War; The Great Locomotive Chase; and Glover Machine Works: Casting a New South, plus space for revolving exhibits.

The Museum became a member of the prestigious Smithsonian Affiliations program in October 2001 after a lengthy application process. The affiliation allows the Museum to host traveling Smithsonian exhibits, book Smithsonian historians for lectures, and feature Smithsonian artifacts within its permanent collections. The revolving exhibits program means that there is always something new at the Southern Museum.

The newest addition to the Southern Museum is the Jolley Education Center, which houses Georgia's Merci Boxcar and many interactive displays to engage children in Civil War, railroad and locomotive history.