The Hack Service was the means of transportation to Concord before the coming of the automobile. In 1889, the school catalog stated that "a regular line of hacks had been placed on the road from Hinton to Concord by Mr. J.E. Meadows, one of these hacks will leave Hinton, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning". Later catalogs described hack services operated by Captain William Holroyd, Mr. H.B. Sweeney and Mr. C.D. Dardun, to Hinton and to Oakvale. This picture shows a hack operated by Mr. Wiley J. Compton, about 1910.

A street car line was planned to connect Athens and Princeton, but was never finished. The right-of-way was later used for a state highway. A modern bus service later connected Athens and Princeton for a number of years, pictured below.

Prior to that time, the only link between the village and the new college campus was the Red Sulphur Turnpike, usually a dust bowl or a mud hole, depending upon the weather. The road was improved as a result of the efforts of President Lawrence B. Hill.

When the college was established, the community was still very small and primitive. The church was less than 25 years old, the post office and hotel only 3 years old. There were only five families mentioned as living in the village. After the school was established, other families moved to the town. The sidewalks were paved about 1915, with the residents of the town doing most of the work. The woman prepared food while the men worked, much as the frontier practice for a barn-raising.