Reno Southern Pacific Railroad Depot

About this property

Reno station is an Amtrak intercity train station in Reno, Nevada, served by the California Zephyr train. It is also serviced by five times per weekday, and twice on weekends, by Amtrak Thruway routes to Sacramento. The station is located at 280 North Center Street in downtown Reno. The tracks are owned by the Union Pacific Railroad, while the station and platform are owned by the city of Reno. The station does not have a parking lot. The tracks are placed below ground level as they pass through the heart of downtown Reno. As of 2014, the station was served by the once-daily California Zephyr, running between Chicago and Emeryville, California (in the San Francisco Bay Area). The previous year, the station served 78,827 passengers, or about 216 per day. The station is popular with passengers traveling in both directions between Northern California and Reno. Three Amtrak Thruway routes, two originating at the station and one at the Nugget Casino Resort in Sparks, connect the station to Sacramento. A depot has existed at this location since the first transcontinental railroad arrived in Reno in 1868; the Central Pacific Railroad opened through the area on June 19. The Virginia and Truckee Railroad additionally served the station after the line from Carson City was completed in 1872. The first station was temporary, lasting only a few months before being replaced by the Depot Hotel, a combination structure which also featured a restaurant. The hotel was likely a joint venture between the Central Pacific and a local proprietor. After surviving several fires, it eventually succumbed to the March 1879 Reno fire but was quickly rebuilt. The second Depot Hotel would, itself, burn down on May 1889 and the railroad decided to exit the hotel business in Reno. That December, a new one-story depot opened which also housed a Wells Fargo office. Southern Pacific went on to expand the facility, adding gendered waiting rooms. Before 1910, the Nevada–California–Oregon Railway depot in Reno was located immediately to the north of the Southern Pacific station. The Western Pacific Railroad provided service to Reno after their acquisition of the NCO in Nevada, but never used this station — instead using the (now disused for rail service) Nevada–California–Oregon Railroad Depot, a few blocks to the east. The Southern Pacific Depot was also the terminus of Reno's street railways: Reno Traction Company streetcars and the Nevada Interurban served the station between 1908 and 1925. Locals began calling for a more grand station building as early as 1910. The current stucco depot was built by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1926. The new building reused bricks which had been used by the previous structure. The Virginia and Truckee utilized the station until 1950, when the railroad ceased operations.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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