Hanson was founded in 1869 on a fifty acre tract donated by Judge Robert Eastwood and Rev. Roland Gooch to the Henderson and Nashville Railroad (now the Seaboard Railroad). Hanson was named in honor of Henry B. Hanson, a civil engineer who worked for the railroad and plotted the town. A passenger and freight depot was soon built adjacent to the tracks and Hanson became a shipping center for area farmers. By the 1880s, Hanson was bustling community of over one hundred residents with six tobacco factories, sawmills, a hotel, a bank and many frame stores along Main Street.