Southern Pacific Railroad Depot - Brownsville, Oregon
N 44° 23.621 W 122° 59.020
10T E 501300 N 4915599
The depot was likely constructed in the 1890s, about the time that the railroad was converted from narrow to standard gauge. Today it is the home of the Linn County Historical Museum.
Waymark Code: WM59K3
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 12/01/2008
Published By:
PFF
Views: 9
From the web site 'Southern Pacific Transportation Company Depots, Freight Houses, and Line-side Structures' as presented by Art Fisher (
visit link) the Brownsville Depot is a Southern Pacific Common Standard No. 11 depot.
From the Linn County Historical Museum web page, located at the link below -
Although the first railroad in Linn County was the Oregon and California Railroad which arrived from the north in 1870, the need had been felt for years, as early as 1854, to bring a railroad to Brownsville. Nothing came of a plan promoted by about fifty men in the early 1850s, but their company name, the Oregon and California Railroad, was picked up years later when Ben Holladay began building his great line through the Willamette Valley, passing through Halsey six miles west of Brownsville.
Brownsville became a busy market center, and by 1878 the prevailing sentiment was that the town definitely needed a railroad. George A. Dyson, a local tinsmith, started Brownsville’s first newspaper, The Advertiser, with the sole purpose of promoting a railroad for the town. On December 2, 1880, Dyson’s dream of a railroad came true when the Oregonian Railroad Company completed a narrow gauge line as far south as Brownsville.
After some years, during which the large lines jockeyed for control of railroading in Oregon, the Southern Pacific Company bought the railroad. By 1894 the track in Brownsville had been widened to standard gauge, and the people were enjoying “all rail communication with Portland…by means of the Woodburn-Springfield branch of the Southern Pacific…” It was probably during this period that the present Depot, now the Linn County Museum, was built in the familiar bungalow style adopted by Southern Pacific. The Depot was located at the northwest end of town, next to the railroad tracks. Well into the first half of this century [20th century], the railroad was a major link between Brownsville and the rest of Linn County.
Then, with the decline of the railroads, the Brownsville track was used only as an industrial spur, and the old Depot was no longer the center of the town’s comings and goings. In the 1960s the Southern Pacific donated the depot building to the Linn County Historical Society which turned it over to the City of Brownsville. The City later sold it to Ray Bubak, an antique dealer who dismantled and later re-assembled the building on its present site. In 1981 the County acquired the land and building, Southern Pacific donated some railroad cars, and the combined building Depot and cars were renovated and dedicated in June, 1984, as the Linn County Historical Museum.