Salem Station is an Amtrak

Amtrak

The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak , is a government-owned corporation that was organized on May 1, 1971, to provide intercity passenger train service in the United States. "Amtrak" is a portmanteau of the words "America" and "track". It is headquartered at Union...

 train station in Salem

Salem, Oregon

Salem is the capital of the U.S. state of Oregon, and the county seat of Marion County. It is located in the center of the Willamette Valley alongside the Willamette River, which runs north through the city. The river forms the boundary between Marion and Polk counties, and the city neighborhood...

, Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It is served by the Amtrak Cascades

Amtrak Cascades

The Amtrak Cascades is a passenger train route operated by Amtrak in partnership with the states of Washington and Oregon in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and the province of British Columbia in Canada...

and the Coast Starlight

Coast Starlight

The Coast Starlight is a passenger train operated by Amtrak on the West Coast of the United States. It runs from King Street Station in Seattle, Washington, to Union Station in Los Angeles, California. The train's name was formed as a merging of two of Southern Pacific's train names, the Coast...

passenger trains.

History

This station was constructed for the Southern Pacific Railroad

Southern Pacific Railroad

The Southern Pacific Transportation Company , earlier Southern Pacific Railroad and Southern Pacific Company, and usually simply called the Southern Pacific or Espee, was an American railroad....

 in 1918 and is the third station to be built at this location. The two previous stations were built in 1871 and 1889. The 1871 depot burned down in 1885. The Queen Anne-style

Queen Anne Style architecture

The Queen Anne Style in Britain means either the English Baroque architectural style roughly of the reign of Queen Anne , or a revived form that was popular in the last quarter of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century...

 1889 depot burned down on March 5, 1917.

The current Beaux-Arts-style structure was constructed of masonry

Masonry

Masonry is the building of structures from individual units laid in and bound together by mortar; the term masonry can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are brick, stone, marble, granite, travertine, limestone; concrete block, glass block, stucco, and...

 and is one of five masonry depots that still exist along the original Southern Pacific West Coast line. The other depots are in Albany, Medford

Medford, Oregon

Medford is a city in Jackson County, Oregon, United States. As of the 2010 US Census, the city had a total population of 74,907 and a metropolitan area population of 207,010, making the Medford MSA the 4th largest metro area in Oregon...

, Roseburg

Roseburg, Oregon

Roseburg is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is the county seat of Douglas County. The population was 21,181 at the 2010 census.-History:...

 and Eugene

Eugene (Amtrak station)

The Eugene Depot is an Amtrak train station in Eugene, Oregon, United States. It is served by the Coast Starlight passenger train and is the southern terminus of the Amtrak Cascades.-History:...

.

A restoration project by the Oregon Department of Transportation

Oregon Department of Transportation

The Oregon Department of Transportation is a department of the state government of the U.S. state of Oregon responsible for systems of transportation. It was first established in 1969. It had been preceded by the Oregon State Highway Department which, along with the Oregon State Highway...

 (ODOT) was completed in 2000. Amtrak leases the station from ODOT for $1 a year, in exchange for maintenance of the building and grounds.

An 1889 Railway Express Agency

Railway Express Agency

The Railway Express Agency was a the national monopoly set up by the Untied States federal government in 1917. Rail express services provided small package and parcel transportation using the extant railroad infrastructure much as UPS functions today using the road system...

 (REA) freight depot/baggage shed survived the fire that destroyed the previous station and is the oldest freight depot still in existence in the state. After the 1917 fire, the Queen Anne-style REA depot was relocated from its original site to south of the passenger station. The REA depot has not been used since the mid-1970s, and now awaits restoration.

The station and baggage depot were added to the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

on February 12, 2010.

Ridership

Of the seven Oregon stations served by Amtrak, Salem was the third busiest in FY2010, boarding or detraining an average of approximately 170 passengers daily.

External links

• Historic images of the 1889 and 1918 depots from Salem Public Library

• Amtrak Stations Database