Great Northern Depot, Bemidji

Bemidji’s Great Northern Depot—James J. Hill’s last commissioned depot—celebrated its grand opening in January of 1913. Replacing the first Great Northern Depot, a wooden structure built in 1898, this impressive brick and sandstone building provided space and modern amenities to accommodate the needs of the growing community.

The wooden depot had been enlarged in 1901. In 1903, electricity was added, and in 1905, a baggage room; but the old depot was still insufficient. By 1907, the Bemidji Commercial Club had started a push for a new station. The old depot was too small, not well ventilated, and couldn’t handle the traffic that was coming through Bemidji.

In June of 1911, pleas went out to the Great Northern Railway to build a new depot. Governor Adolph Eberhart and Louis Hill, president of the railway and son of railroad tycoon James J. Hill, visited Bemidji. The Bemidji Commercial Club treated them to dinner at the Markham Hotel and took them by boat around Lake Bemidji. Afterward, local businessmen rode with Louis Hill in his private coach on the train for further discussion.

In January of 1912, James J. Hill, chairman of the board of the Great Northern Railway, came to Bemidji. He spoke at the Armory on Bemidji Avenue; the Commercial Club entertained him at the Markham Hotel and escorted him around the city.

On April 25, 1912, a headline in the Bemidji Daily Pioneer announced: “Hill Promises a New Brick Building.” Work was to start immediately. Plans that had been drawn up the previous year were re-examined because they called for an expensive “Permanent Type A depot, usually built for towns of 20,000 or more.” But when Hill visited Bemidji, the first thing he noticed when he stepped off the train was an impressive new brick Soo Line and Minnesota & International Railway depot just down the tracks to the east. “We will build a depot and a good one,” he said. The original plans were approved for a 217-foot-long, 7,000-square-foot building with a red brick and sandstone exterior.

Most of the work on the depot was completed before the end of 1912. Thousands of people toured the depot for its grand opening on January 16, 1913. The center of the building housed the ticket office, and the east end had baggage rooms and a freight room. On the west end were modern ladies’ and men’s rooms. Each waiting room had settees, and the ladies’ room had several rockers.

A small, windowed projection on the south side allowed views of the tracks from both directions. All wires entered the new structure from the rear, so as not to distract from the aesthetics of the building.

Hill returned to Bemidji by train for the grand opening and spoke at a banquet at the Markham Hotel that evening. He told the crowd he’d taken special care to see to the depot’s completion since it would be his last.

The depot served passengers until the late 1950s and continued as a freight depot until the mid-1980s, when it was closed, boarded up, and abandoned. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988, but without a tenant, the building was damaged by water seepage and vandals and dirtied by pigeons, bats, and rodents. The Great Northern Depot had become a liability to the railroad company. Orders were sent from Burlington Northern to demolish the building.

Thanks to Roger Mackenroth (a railroad superintendent who put the demolition orders on hold), the hard work and fundraising of a devoted Historical Society Museum Committee, and a state capital bonding bill for $650,000, the building was saved and renovated at a cost of nearly two million dollars. It reopened as the home of the Beltrami County Historical Society in October of 2000.

Instead of meeting the fate of a wrecking ball, Bemidji’s Great Northern Depot became a repository for the history of which it is a part.