Evanston Railroad Complex

We took some time to poke around Evanston and we found the Evanston Railroad Complex. According to the Evanston website:

The Union Pacific Railroad established a stone roundhouse and associated shops in Evanston in 1870, just a year after the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Built at the same time were the machine shop, power house, brick store, gas storage buildings, yard buildings, office and restrooms. --City of Evanston Website

We were the only ones there and took some time to walk around the buildings and take some photographs.

This building is The Power House, built in in the early 1900's. The above picture of the window is taken here. This one of the three primary buildings on the site and has been identified for restoration.

Because of the design of the building, you can literally see through the building front to back and side to side.

"The railroad arrived in the area in November 1868, and Harvey Booth opened a saloon/restaurant in a tent near what is now Front Street. By December the rails had reached Evanston and the first train arrived December 16. Later a machine shop and roundhouse were constructed, giving Evanston a longevity not shared with many other railroad towns.^[8]

Abundant timber and water along the Bear River made Evanston a refueling station for cross-country locomotives. Coal was mined a few miles north of Evanston in Almy. Similar to other railroad towns in Wyoming, early Evanston had a large population of Chinese railroad workers — in Evanston they lived on the north side of the railroad tracks in a small "China town." Over time, the Chinese population dwindled, disappearing completely in the 1930s." --Wikipedia

The city has plans to renovate and has begun work on the iconic Roundhouse. It's quite an impressive 28 bay circular structure built 1912-13. See the master plan here.

My photos really don't do it justice. There is an excellent article on this site with plenty of the old-timey photos at jacobgines.blogspot.com.

I love looking at the buildings of the late 1800's and early 1900's that are still found on the backroads of the West. I see many grand and glorious abandoned dreams. There was a reason all of this happened and a reason it all went away. Sometimes I see photographs from that time, with advent of automobiles and trains and the Industrial Revolution and think about today. Such a belief in machines and technology. It revolutionized the world! Then the world moved on and it died, the buildings left rotting in the sun, physically telling the tail of boom and bust.

I see new buildings standing empty today. Do the dreamers come back?

This is an interesting site, worth a look if you ever find yourself with free time in Evanston.