Letter: Depot has long and varied history

The Dec. 30 story “Go by train” about the Vancouver train depot was very nice. However, the depot had little to do with the Southern Pacific Railroad.

In 1905, James Hill of Great Northern Railway and Northern Pacific Railway fame, started the Portland & Seattle Railroad up the north bank of the Columbia River to Pasco.

In 1908, the name was changed to the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway, though the rail line never went to Seattle. The SP&S 700 steam engine put in more than a million miles between Portland and Spokane from 1938 until 1956. Between 1905 and 1908, they built the train depot at Vancouver.

The Southern Pacific Railroad never did never extend north into Washington state. The Vancouver depot was used by the Spokane, Portland & Seattle passenger trains, Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Union Pacific, and other passenger trains to Seattle until March of 1970.

Eventually, the SP&S, Great Northern, Northern Pacific, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, the Pacific Coast Railroad and affiliated smaller lines such as Oregon Electric, which ran from Portland to Eugene, Ore., all merged into Burlington Northern. After the merger, passenger trains only ran for a short time until Amtrak was formed by the government. It still is running today.

The depot is now owned by the city of Vancouver.

Jerry Jacobus

Vancouver