In the early 1850's the Pacific Railroad Company started building a railroad westward out of St. Louis. Seely was hoping that the line would come near his settlement at Round Hill but learned from the surveyors that it would not. Instead, it was going to cross a 160-acre tract which he owned three miles south of Round Hill. In 1857 he executed a document with the Pacific Railroad Company telling them that he would give them a strip of land 100 feet wide across his land for the road bed and that he would give a maximum of four acres for the location of a freight and passenger station, reservoir and fuel storage area. Also he agreed to lay out a plan for town lots west of the station and would let the railroad engineer approve the plan. The document states that because of the advantages that he expected to derive from the railroad that he would also give one4ourth of the 160 acres to aid in the construction and equipping of the station. The document, executed on Dec. 21, 1857, was the beginning of Tipton.

The development of Tipton moved along rapidly. On March 1, 1858, William Tipton Seely had a sale of lots and the name of Tipton (Mr. Seely's middle name) was given to the town. The construction of homes and businesses was begun immediately and progressed at a rapid rate. By the time the railroad bed was completed to Tipton in August of 1858, there were already 250 people living here. The town became a boomtown because local citizens seemed to feel that this might be the western terminus of the Pacific Railroad for several years. At the end of the first year there were already four dry goods stores, four lumber yards, three grocery stores, two saddlers and one blacksmith, three livery stables, two hotels, a furniture store, a restaurant and five saloons. Tipton quickly became a thriving town because Wells Fargo, The U.S. Express, stagecoaches, pony express, and heavy freight wagons came here for mail, passengers and heavy freight brought in by the railroad. During this first year of rapid growth Tipton acquired four doctors and a dentist but there were no churches, schools, preachers, or newspapers.