Burlington Depot

The depot nearly ended as scrap. In 1965 the railroad sold it to a salvage company, and the owner, V. H. Fette of McCook, gave the building to the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial, now the Willa Cather Foundation. Safety rules required it to leave the tracks, so as much of the old structure as could be saved was moved onto a new foundation. Restorers worked from the original floor plans, reused the platform bricks and painted it Burlington red. Burlington vice president Fred B. Deines cut the ribbon on April 18, 1970.

What the plaque says

Burlington Depot Built in 1897, the main section of Red Cloud's Burlington Depot contained sleeping quarters on the second floor, and freight room, agent's office, and waiting room below. The building was moved here from its site near the tracks directly south of its present location. Depots and trains played a significant role in Willa Cather's life and writings, symbolizing both escape to the world and the door through which the world came to Red Cloud. Restored and donated by the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation. Administered by the Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Willa Cather Center — 0.8 mi
  The restored Moon Block on Red Cloud's Webster Street, home of the Willa Cather Foundation, with the town she grew up in and wrote about laid out around it.
• Willa Cather Memorial Prairie — 5.1 mi
  Six hundred and twelve acres of never-plowed mixed-grass prairie south of Red Cloud, once Kitkehahki Pawnee country, named for the writer who said the grass was the country.
• Home on the Range Cabin — 26 mi
  Dr. Brewster Higley's 1872 homestead cabin on West Beaver Creek in Smith County, where he wrote the poem that became Home on the Range, kept on its ground by a farm couple who would not sell it.

More markers nearby

• St. Juliana Falconieri Catholic Church — 0.2 mi
• Cather Childhood Home — 0.7 mi
• Red Cloud, 1871-1971 — 0.7 mi
• Grace Episcopal Church — 0.9 mi