Located along U.S. Route 258 in the far western corner of Pitt County, Fountain is less than ten miles west of the Tar River, seven miles northwest of the larger town of ?Farmville and within twenty miles of Greenville, Tarboro and Wilson. The town, which has approximately 438 residents, was laid out on a grid pattern along axes of Wilson Street (running east to west) and Railroad Street (running north to south). Its silty, sandy soil is typical of Pitt County – and eastern North Carolina in general – and supports dense pine forests, tobacco farms, and fertilizer mining in the surrounding countryside.

The town of Fountain was developed along the Eastern Carolina Railway (ECR) around the turn of the twentieth century. The rail line was established in 1898 by Henry Clark Bridgers (1876-1951) of Edgecombe County to connect the river city of Tarboro with farming communities to the south. By 1902 the stretch of railroad that ran by what would become the town of Fountain was complete and the twenty-two-year-old R.A. Fountain had constructed his first store and livery stable across from the tracks.

At first, the stop by Fountain’s store “was little more than a flag stop on the line.” Initially it was called “Turnages,’ named for H.C. Turnage, then “Slabtown,” for the row of log-slab houses built along the tracks, and then “Reba,” perhaps after Bridgers’ sister or in honor of the first baby born in the town, In 1903, the fledgling town incorporated with the name of Fountain, in honor of the man responsible for its existence.