PUEBLO — When lawyer Jim Koncilja saw China and Europe developing 200-mile-per-hour bullet trains, he wanted to revive the passenger rail service that once carried Coloradans around their state.
He and his brother paid $3.5 million for a defunct 1889 train station, the Pueblo Union Depot, where vandals had broken in and set fires on the mosaic tile floor. They launched a $4 million project two decades ago to restore the station down to the details, a three-story red sandstone bulwark in the heart of the city with ornate woodwork ceilings and stained glass windows. They opened a café across B Street and are planning a jazz club on the station’s second floor, above a statue of a Roman goddess aiming an arrow.
But there are no scheduled trains.
The work became a matter of “stewardship” of what they call “the Ellis Island of the West,” where thousands of immigrants arrived from Europe for work in southern Colorado’s coal mines and steel mill. “Our grandparents from Slovenia and Italy came into Ellis Island, hopped a train and came here,” said Koncilja, who sees a passenger rail comeback as crucial for sustainable mobility.
“Europe and China have seen the future. We in the United States demolished what we had. It was a major financial error for us to vacate all these passenger railways. Someday it is going to be returned and alleviate some of our modern problems, such as traffic congestion and air pollution.”
It’s one of scores of old stations from a century ago when passenger trains whistled and hissed along tracks that crisscrossed the state.
Coloradans have embraced old train stations even as they are used for non-transportation purposes, from making meals on wheels to showcasing history, investing millions of dollars to preserve their craftsmanship and glory. Many were architectural masterpieces. They sit on prime property at the centers of cities and towns, some along proposed routes where passenger trains may roll again.
Around 1910, railroads maintained 545 train stations around Colorado, according to researchers at the Colorado Railroad Museum archives in Golden. As automobile culture led to the demise of in-state rail service by the 1970s, stations were abandoned or demolished, starting in rural areas, including classics at Salida, La Junta, and Sterling.
But many survived. Old train stations still stand in at least 40 towns and cities, a Colorado registry of historic properties shows.
“Old train stations provide a sense of place and belonging. They’ve always been gateways to communities where individuals have begun or ended trips. Having old train stations in city centers can spark a sense of connection with the rest of the state,” said Jack Wheeler, president of the Colorado Rail Passenger Association. “Most importantly, they remind citizens that there’s an alternative to driving.”
Restoration projects to preserve, protect, and redevelop old train stations are gaining momentum from small-town efforts to buttress brick foundations to Denver’s $500 million reconstruction of Union Station.
Meanwhile, Colorado leaders are finalizing plans to revive passenger rail service using existing tracks along the Front Range and through the northwestern mountains between Denver and Craig. A separate Southwest Chief “thru-car” project that received a federal study grant would link La Junta with Pueblo and Colorado Springs. The Colorado Department of Transportation hasn’t ruled out other possible passenger rail routes using tracks that run from Pueblo to Salida and Leadville, then over Tennessee Pass to Minturn and the Interstate 70 corridor.
“We still feel as if we are a meaningful stop,” said Grand Junction entrepreneur Dustin Anzures, co-owner of the 1906 Grand Junction Union Depot, which had been boarded shut for 30 years until he re-opened it in 2023.
The price was $350,000 in 2016. Since then, Anzures has rallied residents – 900 attended an open house – to raise funds for a $3.5 million restoration. He plans a boutique hotel and shops integrated with an adjacent CDOT regional mobility hub for Bustang buses and e-scooters.
“When people fly places, they want to hurry up and get there and then start their vacation,” Anzures said. As soon as you step on a train, you start your experience. The comfort on a train far outweighs the comfort on a plane. You can get up and walk around. You can sit in the dining room and talk or play cards. It’s a more interactive way to travel. You can get a room if you want a bed. Every car has an attendant. Then, add in the scenery. You get to see the landscape of the American West. You get to see things you cannot see from a plane or a car.”
For now, most surviving old train stations serve new non-transit purposes as a movie-making site in Gunnison, base for city inspectors in Walsenburg, meat processing company offices in Rocky Ford, and community centers in Steamboat Springs and Boulder. But the structures, once restored, also reflect their original mission and raise hopes for new service.
“That would be fantastic,” said Otero County administrative assistant Jennifer Rife in southeastern Colorado. “We’re the forgotten zone of Colorado because we don’t live next to the mountains, and we don’t have many people living out here. My kids live in Colorado Springs,” Rife said. “I could read, hang out, eat.”
Florence
In Florence, residents used a $150,000 state grant to replace the roof of a former Denver & Rio Grande Railroad station and plan more restoration work. When passenger train service ended in 1967, town officials set up offices in the station before converting it into a senior community center with a kitchen where elderly residents prepare meals, play cards, dance, and exercise. On Wednesday mornings, they host town gatherings to discuss local news over coffee and pastries, often including the mayor and police chief.
It’s where workers caught trains to Pueblo or Canon City. Other trains running from Cripple Creek to Florence through Phantom Canyon carried gold ore from mines to smelters. Coal mines and, later, oil and gas operations provided jobs before Florence lost those industries. Another old train station in town became a private residence. A third became an A&W drive-in, then Polar King, then the Jade Café.
“Our train station is going to thrive. We’re making sure it is a centerpiece of Florence,” said Millie Wintz, 93, a keeper of town archives.
Westcliffe
Over Hardscrabble Pass in Westcliffe, trains that carried passengers and freight to the Wet Mountain Valley, starting in the 1880s, ended in the 1930s. Workers removed the tracks by 1938. The train station served as a home for the station master, then as a motel and as a mechanics shop. A fire destroyed the south end. A woman who had played in the house with the station master’s daughters bought it and restored it as a home where she lived with her husband and children. For the past two decades, the local nonprofit All Aboard Westcliffe has been restoring it and using it as a railroad museum.
All Aboard Westcliffe earned $7,000 profit last year by renting the upstairs living quarters as an Airbnb to help sustain preservation work, said Sandy Messick, the group’s president.
“This is just about knowing your roots. The railroad is the reason Westcliffe exists,” she said, recounting the rivalry with neighboring Silver Cliff to be closest to the tracks. Saving the old station “helps us understand how people got here and why they might have come. Miners came, and the rail helped that industry, which created demand for other businesses. It helps us honor what built us.”
Canon City
In Canon City, the Royal Gorge Chamber Alliance bought the 1909 train station where passenger service ended in 1967. Royal Gorge tourist loop trains run from a separate, restored station. Chamber directors made a $800,000 down payment and are raising funds to restore the station to become a “gateway depot plaza,” the group’s president, Rich Millard, said. They envision a hub for business with farmer’s markets, concerts, and craft fairs in an adjacent park.
Lamar
In Lamar, a train station listed on the National Historic Register still serves as a stop for Southwest Chief Amtrak trains before they move to La Junta and Trinidad along the route from Chicago to Los Angeles.
“I’m grateful we’re still able to use it. It still has a purpose and a life,” said Anne Marie Crampton, director of community development. The building also serves as a southeastern Colorado welcome center with chamber of commerce offices and, outside, a Madonna of the Trail monument to pioneer women along the historic Santa Fe Trail.
When the station was deteriorating in the late 1980s, local leaders raised funds for a partial renovation to preserve local history. “They realized they wanted to re-invest. It’s a beautiful building,” Crampton said. “We are a small town, not well-funded. We will continue to have a future. Instead of saying: ‘Yesterday was better than today’ we just need to embrace our history and also embrace our future and be open to change.”
Grover
On the plains of northeastern Colorado, historical preservation of old train stations is taking off even though there are no hopes for restoring passenger rail service.
A red wooden station built in 1887 in Grover (population 160), 60 miles northeast of Greeley, once served residents who rode trains to Sterling and 120 miles to Cheyenne, Wyoming. But it had practically blown down by the 1970s.
The last railroad agent planned to demolish it and sell the lumber, said Tanya Wahlert, president of the local Pawnee Historical Society. In 1975, local women rallied to save it. An unidentified donor bought the station. A member of the Denver Audubon Society who visited the nearby Pawnee Buttes helped replace windows.
In 2024, a state grant of $80,589 funded work to start stabilizing brick foundations. Now the historical society is applying for a $250,000 state grant to shore up walls and the foundations and seeking sponsors to commit required matching funds.
“Old train stations are an important piece of history for small towns. It’s how the plains were settled,” Wahlert said. “They symbolize the dreams people had. Railroad companies were going to make money bringing people in. Why keep it alive? Look what people went through, their difficulties. They persevered.”
Julesburg
At Julesburg (population 1,400), Union Pacific owners had planned to raze their train station after ending passenger service in 1971. They wanted to clear the station away from tracks where freight trains roll through town (still as frequently as every 15 minutes). Town leaders intervened, persuading railroad officials to sell the station for a nominal fee on the condition residents would move it.
The residents raised funds for the move and to convert the station into a history museum. Over the past 50 years, they’ve raised more than $971,000 for restoration work, including a $305,000 state government grant.
So much life happened in that station, said Jeana Johnson, who oversees museums in Sedgwick County.
Julesburg residents wanted a complete renovation, launched in 2016 and completed in 2023, restoring train ticketing windows and the walls as they were when trains rolled, Johnson said. “The reason we are here is the railroad.”
Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs will go modern.
The city’s train service team met with Front Range Passenger Rail District officials this week, reviewing the plans to eventually run passenger trains south from Denver to Castle Rock, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo. They also met with organizers of the Southwest Chief project, “which in some ways is advancing more rapidly,” to bring trains northward from La Junta and Pueblo to Colorado Springs, city engineer and deputy public works director Gayle Sturdivant said.
When the last passenger trains left Colorado Springs in 1971, a developer bought the 1887 train station and launched Giuseppe’s, a pizza restaurant that lasted until 2011. A 1917 Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Station in Colorado Springs became a defense industry technology and innovation training center.
City leaders commissioned a study to find the best place for a new train station. Not owning the old stations was an obstacle. They settled on a four-acre site by the 16.9-acre America the Beautiful Park. An architectural rendering shows a $26 million futuristic station devoted solely to transit.
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