(Bob Bull photo collection)

The four bulletin boards in the lobby of La Grande’s Union Pacific Railroad depot are filled with postings of current information, but look closely at one and the etchings of a bygone era become visible.

This is fitting, for the railroad depot has a storied past, one now being commemorated. December marked the 85th anniversary of the completion of the depot, the third in La Grande’s history.

The depot was hailed as the finest one in Eastern Oregon when it opened in 1930, after being built at a cost of $150,000, the equivalent of about $2 million today. The opening of the depot in 1930 was a major event in La Grande that year, celebrated with significant pomp and circumstance. A story about the building’s dedication warranted an eight-column headline across the top of the front page of The Observer on Dec. 27, 1930.

Dedication events included a morning reception for railroad officials followed by a dedication at 3 p.m., with speeches, inspections and a municipal band playing “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Festivities continued throughout the day with a tea for officials’ wives at the La Grande Hotel, a banquet involving mostly railroaders at the old Sacajawea Inn, and an evening return to the station for more music, talks and tours.

The depot opened during a time in which about six passenger trains came into La Grande each day, half heading west to Portland and the other half running east from Portland. Etchings of imprints of the old train schedule can still be seen and felt on the black bulletin board in the depot’s lobby.

Trains that stopped daily in La Grande included the famous Portland Rose, once considered one of the most lavish passenger trains in the Northwest. Evidence of the train’s appearances can still be found in the depot lobby on one of its bulletin boards.

“You can run your fingers over the board and feel the passenger train name ‘Portland Rose,'” said Michael Rosenbaum, a La Grande resident interested in the railroad history of Northeast Oregon and its own architectural history.

La Grande had a population of 9,600 when the depot opened in 1930, according to a story in the Dec. 27, 1930, edition of The Observer. That Union Pacific decided to build such a significant structure in La Grande was a salute to the prominent place it had gained in the Northwest.

“The dedication of the $150,000 UP Depot is one of the most important events in La Grande’s history because it marks the growth of La Grande from a small Eastern Oregon town to one of the leading cities in the Inland Empire,” editors wrote in a Dec. 27, 1930, Observer editorial.

The same editorial claimed the depot would provide almost unlimited benefits to La Grande in the future.

“Nor mustn’t we lose sight of the tremendous advertising allure that will result from the new structure with its attractive surroundings. The thousands of travelers who pass east and west through La Grande will have presented to their vision additional evidence of the fact that this is the outstanding city of Eastern Oregon and it is impossible to forecast the far reaching benefits that will result.”

An ad from U.S. National Bank in The Observer in the same 1930 edition of The Observer seemed to second the sentiment.

“Today we celebrate the completion of what we consider to be the greatest and most important asset La Grande has ever experienced,” the ad stated.

Rosenbaum agreed that the railroad depot’s construction was important symbolically.

“It meant we had arrived as an important railroad center,” Rosenbaum said.

The railroad depot is not the oldest building in La Grande, but few, if any, structures have a more important place in the city’s history or its connections to it. The depot, for example, is where people waited for the arrival of many famous dignitaries who stopped in

La Grande during the heyday of passenger train service.

These included President Franklin Roosevelt, who stopped in La Grande just past midnight on Sept. 27, 1937, with First Lady Eleanor, according to The Observer archives. FDR was asleep but Eleanor came out and talked to a small crowd. On May 11, 1950, President Harry Truman spoke from the platform of a train to a crowd of 4,000 to 5,000 during an afternoon stop in

La Grande. Today, that remains the only time a sitting U.S. President made an address in La Grande.

Beyond the occasional appearance of dignitaries and celebrities, the depot for decades was a hub of activity. Six passenger trains stopped daily to unload and pick up passengers.

“It was always a busy place,” said Bob Bull of

La Grande, a local historian and author.

Anyone walking into the depot’s lobby six decades ago – when the building was buzzing with passengers – would have seen a woman operating a vending stand.

“She sold magazines and snacks at her stand for years,” said John Turner, who has written and published several books about La Grande’s history.

The passenger trains that stopped in La Grande transported more than people. Each daily train had at least one mail car. U.S. Postal Service workers sorted all the mail they picked up at stops in these cars.

“These cars were post offices on wheels,” said Larry Vermillion of La Grande, a former Union Pacific employee.

The new La Grande depot became a town square of sorts, with lawns and landscaping installed not long after opening, Rosenbaum said. Red cedar, sycamore, birch and Hawthorn trees were planted and Boston and English ivy shrouded the building.

“It was a park-like setting,” Rosenbaum said.

The ivy and lawn enhanced the structure, which was designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood, one of the most respected architects of his era.

“Underwood’s elegant western design gave

La Grande a prominent public center,” Rosenbaum said. “This is a major piece of architecture designed by a world-renowned architect.”