Tags

, , , , , ,

Union Station in Ogden is a historic train station located at 2501 Wall Ave in Ogden, Utah. It is in the Lower 25th Street Historic District. It is now several museums and more. The building was constructed in 1869 and reconstructed after a 1924 fire.

Following the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869, four locations were vying for the honor of being the junction for railroad travel in the intermountain West. Within a short time the sites of Promontory’arid Uintah were eliminated. The city of Corrine, founded by non-Mormons in 1869, and the Mormon town of Ogden, established in 1850, soon became rivals as the transportation center.

In November 1869, the Central Pacific purchased forty-seven miles of line from the Union Pacific and leased a remaining six miles to the wooden one-story depot constructed by the Union Pacific in Ogden. As the Utah Northern Railroad pushed north from Ogden in the late 1870’s, the gentile city of Corinne fell into decay.

In 1874 the Ogden City Council passed a resolution appropriating $5,000 “for the purpose of effecting a settlement in relation to establishing the permanent junction at Ogden.” The following year, 1875, Brigham Young deeded 130 acres of land to the railroad companies for the erection of a Union Depot. Eleven years later, in 1886, Charles Francis Adams, President of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, announced plans for the erection of the depot. The impressive depot was dedicated July 31, 1889.

By 1889 Ogden had become the hub of a network of railroad lines: It was the western terminus for the Union Pacific and the Denver & Rio Grande railroads; the eastern terminus of the Central Pacific; the southern terminus of the Utah Northern, which extended through Idaho to Montana where it connected with the Oregon Short Line and the Northern Pacific; the northern terminus of the Utah Central, which ran to the mining town of Frisco in Southern Utah. Ogden was also the terminus for the Echo and Park City railroad, which connected Ogden with the important mining town of Park City.

The depot constructed in 1889 was destroyed by fire in 1923. The present station, which is being nominated to the National Register, was built on the original foundation in 1924. It was designed by john and Donald B. Parkinson of Los Angeles. Although the present building is not a restoration of the 1889 structure, its grand design indicates the importance of Ogden as the railroad center of the Intermountain West.

Because of the decisive role of the railroad in stimulating the economic development of the country and in converting the nation from one of diverse sections into a united and indivisible land, the Ogden Union Depot merits national recognition as a monument to the city of Ogden for its important part in the nation’s railroad story.

Ogden Union Station was added to the National Historic Register (#71000867) on April 11, 1971.

Some of the things located here are: 

1977