El Garces Intermodal Transportation Facility

Introduction

Text-to-speech Audio

The El Garces Intermodal Transportation Facility in Needles, California, is an Amtrak intercity rail station and bus depot. It has also been known as the Needles Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Depot, or just as El Garces. The neoclassical structure was built in 1908. When it opened, it had a Harvey House hotel, a restaurant, and a train station. It was one of the first train stations made of concrete. The hotel and restaurant closed in 1949, and a third of the building was demolished in 1961. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (ATSF) abandoned the station entirely in 1988. The city purchased the building in 1999 and reopened it El Garces Intermodal Transportation Facility in 2014. In 2016, Amtrak opened a dedicated waiting room for Southwest Chief passengers.

Images

Backstory and Context

Text-to-speech Audio

Mojave tribes lived on the land where Needles is now long before European settlers. The first western community was called Camp Colorado, later named Fort Mojave, in 1859. The Southern Pacific Railroad and ATSF (Harvey House and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway) subsidiary Atlantic and Pacific Railroad met at Needles, California, in 1883, and opened a station there. Needles itself was founded in 1883. The Southern Pacific sold its line to to the ATSF in 1884. Needles became a major waypoint on the ATSF route to Los Angeles.

But a fire destroyed that station in 1906. So the ATSF built the current El Garces station in 1908. Architect Francis Wilson designed the Classical Revival structure. He eschewed Mission or Spanish Revival architecture. The structure is wrapped on all sides by deep, 20-foot-wide verandas supported by paired columns. The verandas are meant to give guests plenty of shade.

Aside from the train station itself, the rectangular structure housed a Harvey House hotel and a restaurant when it opened. Harvey Houses dotted ATSF stations across the West. It contained 60 guestrooms, a 73-seat lunchroom, and a 140-seat dining room. Before dining cars were common, passengers had to detrain to eat at a trackside restaurant. Fred Harvey improved and expanded train station restaurant offerings starting in the 1870s.

By 1949, the hotel and restaurant closed. However, ATSF continued to use the train station and used other parts of the building for office space. The eastern third of the building was demolished in 1960. As a result, the building is now 365 feet long and 98.5 feet wide. ATSF moved its offices in 1988 to a former railroad hospital facility south of the depot. As a result, the building was vacant.

In 1999, Needles bought the structure using $9 million in grants from the Federal Transit Authority's New Starts and Small Starts Program. They also received $2.4 million in matching funds from California's State Highway Account, the State and Local Transportation Program, the State Transportation Improvement Program, and San Bernardino County's sales tax.

Today, the structure houses an Amtrak station and the Needles Area Transit office. Amtrak does not provide ticketing or baggage services at this facility, which is served by two daily trains. The exterior and interior retain much of the original construction.

Sources

El Garces Intermodal Transportation Facility, National Register of Historic Places. Accessed July 15th 2020. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/f1911b59-135b-49bc-b482-8eca79a57d6e/.

Needles, CA (NDL), Great American Stations. Accessed July 15th 2020. http://www.greatamericanstations.com/stations/needles-ca-ndl/.

El Garces now open for tours, Route 66 News. March 2nd 2015. Accessed July 15th 2020. https://www.route66news.com/2015/03/05/el-garces-now-open-for-tours/.