Union Pacific Depot History

Built in 1886-1887, the Cheyenne Union Pacific Depot is widely acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful railroad stations in North America.  Constructed from polychromatic sandstone quarried west of Fort Collins, Colorado, the 3-story Depot is a major historical structure in the Rocky Mountain area.  Major renovations of the building occurred in 1922 when the structure was extended to its present 331-foot length, and again in 1929 when the interior was modernized to reflect the then current art deco style.

The Union Pacific Depot in Cheyenne, Wyoming is a nationally prominent landmark that derives its significance from two principal areas:  transportation and architecture.  The Depot is the last of the grand 19th century depots remaining on the transcontinental railroad—one of the best articulated examples of the Richardsonian Romanesque style in the West, designed by one of America’s most distinguished architects at a pivotal point in his practice.  It formed a strategic point along the Union Pacific Railroad, America’s first transcontinental rail line, and was easily the Union Pacific’s most grandiose facility west of its starting point at Council Bluffs.

As an integral part of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific has played a central role in the development of rail transportation in America.  The transcontinental road marked the first large-scale, federally sanctioned construction in the aftermath of the Civil War.  More importantly, it represented a water-shed in American history:  the opening of the West to mechanized travel.  In this, the railroad’s economic impact upon the region-and upon the nation as a whole-can hardly be overstated.  The transcontinental railroad literally stitched the country together, making possible the development of the West.

The Union Pacific Depot was a point of pride for the railroad, the city of Cheyenne and the state of Wyoming.  As the building was nearing completion in September 1887, a reporter for the Cheyenne Sun described its interior layout and finishes at length:

UNION PACIFIC’S MAIN YARD IN CHEYENNE

At the extreme east end of the building on the first floor is the ladies waiting room, 56 by 32 feet and a fraction, 19 feet from floor to ceiling, and finished with the finest and most expensive kind of red oak.  On the east side of the room an old-fashioned fire place has been put in which has the effect of making the spacious and elegant room appear cheerful and homelike.  This room, which has two sets of doors, has been or is to be, furnished with the elegant cushion chairs of the latest style and finish.  As you pass out of this room, going westward, you come to the ladies’ toilet room, and ad­joining this is the wash room, closet, etc., all of which like the ladies setting room, are finished with red oak.  It may as well be stated here that every room in the first story east of the open passage is finished with red oak and is fourteen feet from floor to ceiling.  West of the open passage as in the west wing, the height of the ceiling is the same, but the rooms are finished with yellow pine and red oak.

Across the hall from the ladies’ room is the ticket office, 29x21½ feet in size and one or two rooms to be used therewith adjoining.  The ticket office of course has a south side entrance, and the windows, like all others in this immense structure, are ample.  The fixtures and arrangements of this room are elegant and costly.  Cross the hall again to the north side of the hall and you stand at the windows of the “News office” and package room, the walls of which for two-thirds of the way round are simply ground glass sliding windows, which can be shoved upward into the partition walls and completely hidden from sight.  Let us hasten, however.  Next on the north side you come to the gent’s waiting room, which is the exact counterpart of that destined for the use of the ladies, toilet room, etc., appended or rather adjoining.  The size of this room is also 56x32½ feet.  Now we are at the open passage way fourteen feet wide, through which the largest teams and busses can pass with the utmost convenience.  West of the open passage you step into the baggage-room, its dimensions being 53x32 feet, in which there are scales and all of the modern appliances for determining the charges to be paid upon and the fate in a general way of the modern “Saratoga,” and passing out of this room then going westward you come to the express office, 53x32 feet, amply lighted by spacious windows (as are indeed every room in the building) and just beyond this is the “emigrant room” which is 53x32 feet, but which is to be subdivided so as to have a lunch room on the west side spacious enough for the accommodation of all who may patronize it. 

The emigrant room is heated by steam, and in all its appointments and arrangements is as comfortable as the waiting rooms in the east wing of the building.  As has already been stated, the upper or half story of the building is to be used as a store room, while the second story of the east wing contains the offices of the division superintendent, the train dispatcher, the chief engineer, the telegraph offices, a conductors’ room and various other smaller rooms all elegantly furnished and suitably arranged.  The offices of the officials mentioned are very large, especially that of the superintendent, which is in the extreme east end of the building.  The upper or half story of the east wing is also divided into small rooms, to be used in connection with the offices below.

The tower of the depot including the iron dome or cap will be 128 feet in height, and rises like a great monument directly over the north entrance of the arched open passage-way thereto.  It is the most conspicuous feature of the kind in the city, and with the exception of the capital dome can be seen at a greater distance from Cheyenne than any other object of the kind in the city.

Early in March 1886 the Union Pacific began shipping materials for the depot to Cheyenne.  The railroad loaded flat cars with red- and buff-colored sandstone blocks (seen here to the left) quarried near Fort Collins, Colorado, to be used for the building’s foundations and exterior walls.  On March 15 a small work force comprised of railroad section hands and local day laborers began excavation for the foundations. 

Three days later the men went on strike, demanding higher wages.  While they struck, the contract to build the structure was awarded to J.F. Coots of Kansas City.  Just as the Union Pacific used Henry Van Brunt’s firm to design several of its buildings, the railroad hired John Coots for many of its construction projects. 

The contractor was at the time working on an addition to the UP headquarters in Omaha and several other smaller projects.  For the Cheyenne depot, Coots would combine laborers and subcontractors from Cheyenne with his own crew. Late in April the men moved part of the old frame depot containing the passenger section and ticket office to a new location west of the Pacific Hotel. The express o­fice remained in place east of the hotel, and the lobby of the hotel itself functioned temporarily as the passenger waiting room. 

In May Coots’ crew resumed excavating for the foundation walls, as subcontractor Akroyd of Denver undertook the stonemasonry, using blocks shipped up from Colorado on board UP trains.  The contractors built a looped track around the foundation pit, over which they ran small flat cars loaded with stone and mortar.  To enclose the site, they constructed a high wood plank fence.  “The deep trenches were being rapidly filled up with the foundation stones, and presented a very solid appearance,” the Cheyenne Leader reported in June.  “A large pile of the beautiful red stone to be used in the facings and trimmings of the building was placed at one end of the yard.  No finer stone ever entered into a building’s composition than these, nor any capable of adding a more finished appearance.”

By the end of the month the foundation walls had been extended above the ground line, and the railroad and city could begin planning a ceremony to lay the cornerstone. The Wyoming Lodge of Masons presided over the celebration, held on July 19.  The date was an auspicious one—the 19th anniversary of the surveying of Cheyenne.  A parade of masons, firemen, politicians, city and railroad officials and onlookers marched ceremoniously to the site and watched as the stone was wheeled into place from a derrick.  As Territorial Governor Francis E. Warren and others looked on, the masons anointed the 2500-pound block with wine, oil and corn and pronounced it square and plumb.  The crowd then endured speech­making from the politicians before returning home satisfied that the depot would ultimately be “the largest and grandest structure in the territory.”

Construction on the depot continued through the rest of the year with the destruction of the Pacific Hotel by fire in November as the only reported incident. The contractors increased the size of their work force with an eye to completing the structure by May 1887.  By March the stonework was largely complete, and the men were framing the floors and roof.  After encountering difficulties with settlement of the tower, they worked through the spring and summer on the building’s exterior trim and interior finishes.  

In September a Cheyenne Sun reporter visited the site and described the building as “palace-like.”  “One would almost forget himself and think that he was in the Crystal Palace of old, that formerly adorned the city of London,” he stated, “while taking a stroll up and down its ample halls and corridors.”  Compared with the press coverage given to the depot during its planning and early construction, the building was put into service with relatively little fanfare.  The railroad moved into the upper-level offices in September; two months later the first-floor public spaces were opened and the building complete.  The Sun was ebullient in its praise for the new depot: 

Between Omaha and San Francisco on the line of the Union Pacific railway, there is not to be found a depot equal in size, style or elegance to that which the Union Pacific railway company has just completed—or will be very soon complete—in Cheyenne.  The erection of this magnificent building was commenced in the fall of 1886. . . and the com­pany was induced to commence its erection at that time from two considerations.  First, that such a building as this proves to be was needed by the Union Pacific at this point; and second, the company desired to do whatever it could consistently to advance and promote the material interests of the City of Cheyenne.

Completion of the depot in 1887 would prove timely for the city and region.  As construction of the building was underway, Wyoming was experiencing the worst environmental disaster in its recorded history.  After years of range overgrazing by area cattle ranchers, the region experienced an extremely dry summer in 1886 that killed much of the forage.  This was followed by the worst winter on record, with snow, icy winds and sub-zero temperatures that ravaged the northern plains. 

Starving cattle drifted southward until they encountered fences, then they milled around without food or shelter until they froze to death.  The resulting carnage was unprecedented.  According to one firsthand account, a person could walk along the fence line of the Union Pacific from Ellsworth, Kansas, to Denver, stepping only on carcasses.  The die-off amounted to tens of thousands of cattle, with some ranchers losing up to 85 percent of their herds.  The cattle industry was decimated from Montana to Texas.  The bankrupting of such a large industry had a rippling effect on the territory’s economy that impacted the railroad—which relied heavily on revenues from livestock shipping—particularly severely.  With Wyoming on its knees economically, it is unlikely that the Cheyenne depot would have been built had it been undertaken a year later.

When the depot opened in 1887, one construction detail remained unfinished.  For some reason, the Union Pacific would wait for three years before installing a clock in the prominent clock tower.  Finally placed in the tower in January 1890, the clock featured four faces, each six-feet-four-inches in diameter, that faced in the cardinal directions.  The prominent timepiece had been manufactured by the Seth Thomas Company and weighed some 1000 pounds.  It immediately became a landmark in downtown Cheyenne.  “A person whose eyesight is unimpaired can tell time by the depot clock, when ten blocks away,” stated the Leader.  “It will be lighted at night.”

During this period, the Cheyenne Depot remained essentially unchanged, with im­prove­ments to the park out front as the only incremental changes undertaken to the facility.  In 1922, the rail­road built a 114-foot-long addition onto the east side of the building to house a dining room and kitchen. Designed by the Union Pacific Chief Engineer’s Office in Omaha, the new wing increased the building’s footprint by some 40 percent.  It followed the same general lines as Van Brunt’s original west wing and sensitively mirrored Van Brunt’s original design with its long hipped roof, heavy stone exterior walls and Romanesque window and door openings.

The new wing was built by Utah contractor H.W. Baum, who reopened the Bellevue quarries in Colorado to obtain stone for the exterior walls.  Dubbed “The Beanery” by locals, the restaurant was operated by the UP’s Dining Car and Hotel Department.  It soon proved popular for travelers and residents.  Ernest Hemingway dined there in 1940 after his third marriage, which took place in Cheyenne.  

With its bi-chrome stone construction, hipped roof and large-scale, semicircular-arched windows, the restaurant wing mirrored Van Brunt’s  design for the original west wing.  The addition actually improved the building’s proportions by softening the some­what abrupt eastern end and serving as a counterbalance for the west wing.  The dining room featured ceramic tile floor, dark paneled wood walls and coffered plaster ceilings.  

In 1929 the railroad undertook further changes to the building.  The breezeway at the base of the tower was enclosed to form a new entrance, many of the original wooden columns in the basement were replaced with steel members, and many of the first-floor public spaces were rehabilitated.

Other, subsequent alterations to the building have been comparatively minor.  In 1937 the railroad built covered train sheds and a subway linking them with the station. In 1940 the depot park was covered with a bus terminal for the Union Pacific Stages (later Greyhound Bus Lines).   In 1948 the restaurant was closed.  Part of the space was converted into offices; the remainder was used as a meeting hall for railroad employees.  In 1971 Amtrak took over the passenger service into Cheyenne and that year demolished the train sheds.  The Union Pacific moved the last of its offices from the building in 1990. 

In 1993 the UP donated the building to the City of Cheyenne and Laramie County, and stabilization of the building was begun a year later.  Since then, the building has undergone various stages of an extensive rehabilitation project.  The first floor now houses the Cheyenne Depot Museum and a brewpub/restaurant.  The upper levels house offices for various city and private concerns related to tourism, economic development and the museum. 

Its politically charged conception, frenzied construction, ceremonious opening, and even the scandals and bankruptcy attendant to its operation, captured the imagination of the American public.  No other railroad has received as much attention in the national press as the transcontinental line.  And 140 years after its charter, the Union Pacific is still one of America’s most economically important railroads.  The Cheyenne Depot, in its placement at a strategic point along the railroad’s length, has functioned as a crown jewel in the Union Pacific’s extensive system.

As an integral part of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific has played a central role in the development of rail transportation in America.  The transcontinental road marked the first large-scale, federally sanctioned construction in the aftermath of the Civil War.  More importantly, it represented a water­shed in American history: the opening of the West to mechanized travel.  In this, the railroad’s economic impact upon the region—and upon the nation as a whole—can hardly be overstated. 

The transcontinental railroad literally stitched the country together, making possible the development of the West.  Its politically charged conception, frenzied construction, ceremonious opening, and even the scandals and bankruptcy attendant to its operation, captured the imagination of the American public.  No other railroad has received as much attention in the national press as the transcontinental line.  And 140 years after its charter, the Union Pacific is still one of America’s most economically important railroads.  The Cheyenne Depot, in its placement at a strategic point along the railroad’s length, has functioned as a crown jewel in the Union Pacific’s extensive system. 

One of the most architecturally distinguished buildings designed by one of America’s most important architects, the Cheyenne Union Pacific Depot is a land­mark structure among Henry Van Brunt’s commissions, among Union Pacific depots and among Richardsonian Romanesque buildings in the United States. 

It is one of the most significant passenger depots in the American West.  It was recognized as a National Historic Landmark ... as seen in the picture to the left with Cheyenne Mayor Jack Spiker and Secretary of State Gayle Norton accepting the designation of the Cheyenne Depot Museum as a National Historic Landmark in March 2006.

Read the essay that was written by Clayton Frazer for the Union Pacific Depot nomination for National Historic Landmark in 2005!