Hamlet is a city in Richmond County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 6,042 at the 2020 census.

The Place in Richmond County which presently includes Hamlet was originally known as Sandhills. The Wilmington, Charlotte & Rutherford Railroad was lengthy through the Place in 1866. The first house was constructed there in 1869. In 1872 the estate was purchased by John Shortridge, an English immigrant who intended on building a textile mill along a creek. He renamed the locale Hamlet the later year, supposedly in homage to hamlets in the British Isles. He planted a sycamore tree to celebrate the occasion, which stood until 1946. A read out office was acknowledged in 1876, and that year Shortridge sold a parcel of home to Raleigh and Augusta Air Line Railroad, which completed its own lineage through Hamlet by the bearing in mind year. Railway shops were built in 1894 and the town was formally incorporated on February 9, 1897. Seaboard Air Line Railroad decided to announce its regional headquarters there, and Hamlet hurriedly grew thereafter. By 1910, the locale hosted two five and dimes, five temperate goods stores, and a Coca-Cola bottling plant. From a population of 639 in 1900, the town grew to encompass higher than 4,000 residents in 1930. The Hamlet Hospital—the first such facility in the county—was opened in 1915, and by 1940 it had expanded to a new facility and was the largest in the region.

Hamlet’s early bump was sustained by Seaboard, which heavily invested in services within the town. By the stop of World War I, 30 trains passed through Hamlet daily, and the corporation approved to construct a allowance shop, a roundhouse, and a shipping yard. After World War II, an $11 million classification yard, the first one in the Southeastern United States, was received about one mile north of town, opening in 1954. The Seaboard Line carried mostly freight traffic, but furthermore brought tourists through Hamlet upon the Orange Blossom Special, the Boll Weevil, and the Silver Meteor. Before sleeping cars became predominant, many rail passengers would End in Hamlet and board at the Terminal Hotel or Seaboard Hotel. They provided traffic to the businesses upon Main Street, which included several banks, a jewelry store, shoe shop, drug store, hardware store, opera house, and a bowling alley. Throughout the late 19th and in front 20th centuries Hamlet was visited by prominent persons including Booker T. Washington, William Jennings Bryan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Buffalo Bill, Jenny Lind, and Enrico Caruso. Seaboard provided thousands of mostly-white men subsequent to well-paying, secure employment as conductors, engineers, and brakemen. Workers received ill pay, pension plans, and wages negotiated by national unions. As a result, Hamlet developed a large middle class, unlike the straightforward city of Rockingham, which was house to many poorer textile mill workers.

Hamlet’s economic situation came below strain coming on in the 1960s, as the railroad faced increasing competition from growing road networks, trucking, and expose travel. Seaboard acquired smaller competitors and consolidated its operations, moving workers out of Hamlet. It then froze wages, terminated some positions, and shortened passenger services, diminishing the number of outside visitors to the town. Seaboard became CSX Transportation in 1986. A K-Mart and Walmart were built in Rockingham in the 1970s, providing that municipality in the look of tax revenue and pulling Hamlet’s customers away from their own town. Seaboard laid off hundreds of workers even though more national business chains in the same way as cheaper prices moved into the region, driving down wages and supplementary reducing the viability of Hamlet’s expected businesses along Main Street. Coca-Cola closed its bottling tree-plant in 1973. Racially-charged riots broke out in June 1975 after a Hamlet police manager discharged his gun during an altercation subsequent to a black woman. By the late 1980s and ahead of time 1990s, many businesses along Main Street and Hamlet Avenue were vacant, and the Terminal Hotel had become a flophouse. Seaboard’s services employed less than 600 people, and the Hamlet Depot was isolated serviced by Amtrak passenger trains twice a hours of daylight and visited occasionally by railfans. National declines in manufacturing, including textiles, also had a wider stagnating effect upon Richmond County.