| What makes it historical? |
The Denver & Rio Grande Railway was eager to get rail traffic moving west to Salt Lake City, so they got to work extending their tracks to Grand Junction almost as soon as the city began in 1881! In fact, the first locomotive pulled into Grand Junction on November 22, 1882! Back then, the depot was a small log structure, but the company had big plans for Grand Junction! It bought up a lot of land in the south part of town and built a huge repair facility and switchyard!
The log depot got replaced by a Queen Anne style building in 1884, but after a sugar beet boom in the early 1900s, rail traffic soared, more rail companies moved in, and there was need for an even bigger depot!
On April 6, 1905, construction began on Chicago architect, Henry J. Schlack’s, new Italian Renaissance depot! It took a year and five months at a cost of $60,000 (about $1.7 million today) and included stained glass windows, oak woodwork, and fancy restrooms! The depot was a main hub for freight traffic in the coal, oil, and gas industries, as well as passengers traveling on the California and Rio Grande Zephyrs, then Amtrak! In 1992, Amtrak moved to a different building, and the famous depot is still awaiting repairs to reopen. |
