The Gibson post office opened in 1896, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Gibsons Station (1884), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
First census: 264 in 19202020 census: 449130 years
Founding year: the first Gibson post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Gibson’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Peaked at 609 in 1950; 449 people lived here in 2020.
11 censuses, 1920–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Gibson’s Wikipedia page.
Every building
Gibson, building by building, 1902–1914
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
1902Sheet 1 of 1
Edition
Sheets
BrickWoodStone
Sanborn Map Company, via the Library of Congress. Editions published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Gibson was originally located in Richmond County, North Carolina. A post office was built in the area in 1846, and the town was named for its first postmaster, Noah Gibson. In 1883 the Raleigh and Augusta Air Line Railroad made plans to build a spur line to Gibson to bring goods to the locale and ship cotton out from local residents to markets. In anticipation of the railroad connection, Gibson residents erected a depot, hotel, academy, and several additional stores. The spur was built in 1884 and opened on July 1 with daily rail service to Hamlet. In 1891 the Charleston, Sumter and Northern Railroad line from Bennettsville, South Carolina was linked to the Air Line at the Gibson depot. Scotland County was created in 1899 and Gibson became a part of the new jurisdiction. The town was incorporated that year. In 1904 a bank was established. A civic ruritan club was founded in 1946. The ra…
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
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 (6), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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