Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
4 places in town are on the National Register, among them two historic districts with 46 buildings between them. Below: 2 old photos and papers from 1941 on.
The Siloam post office opened in 1871, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Smyrna (1859), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Siloam’s history is told.
The country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving.
National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited on each place’s page.
From Wikipedia’s history of Siloam.
Siloam was originally called "Smyrna", and under the latter name permanent settlement was first made in the 1840s. A post office called Siloam was established in 1871. The present name is after the ancient Siloam tunnel, a place mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
In the archiveBlack Midwife LOCOne decade in the archive so far: the 1940s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Siloam’s page.
Retake this view · +15Siloam’s post office has been open since 1871. Another post office, Smyrna, opened and closed inside today’s town.
US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
The Siloam post office opened in 1871, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
4 listings: 2 buildings, among them the Moore-Crutchfield Place (listed 1990, the first), and 2 historic districts, the Siloam Historic District and the Brown-Bryson Farm, with 46 contributing buildings. 50 historic buildings in all.
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (5), Wikidata (1), the National Register of Historic Places (4), Wikipedia, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock) and the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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