College Station Railroad Depots

The depots were not the only way to reach the college. The Bryan and College Interurban Railway was chartered on March 21, 1910, and its track between the two towns, about five miles, was built in 1911. A branch reached Villa Maria, roughly a mile and a half from Bryan, in 1916. The line ran passengers and express but no freight. Competition from automobiles ended it in 1923, decades before the last passenger trains stopped here in 1959, as the plaque notes.

What the plaque says

College Station Railroad Depots In 1871 Texas governor Edmund Davis appointed three commissioners to select a site for the newly established Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (Texas A&M College). The commissioners chose this location in large part because of the existence of the Houston and Texas Central (H&TC) Railroad line which began in southeast Texas and extended through this area to Bryan (5 mi. north). Although no railroad depot existed here at the time of Texas A&M's formal opening in 1876, the H&TC made regular stops here for incoming and outgoing college students and faculty. H&TC railroad conductor announcements referring to to this stop as "College Station" gave rise to the name of the surrounding community. The H&TC Railroad constructed a depot at this site in 1883 which it replaced with a new depot about 1900. The H&TC depots and another built by the International & Great Northern (I&GN) Railroad just east of this site in 1900 were for many students who attended Texas A&M the first remembrance of their collegiate experience. Railroad depots owned by the H&TC (later named Southern Pacific) and I&GN (later named Missouri Pacific) maintained passenger service at this location until 1959. In 1966 the last of the depot structures was razed. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 1.3 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 20 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.
• Navasota — 22 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 23 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• Main Drill Field, Texas A&M University — steps away
• Texas AMC and WWI — 0.2 mi
• Early Play-By-Play Radio Broadcast of a College Football Game — 0.3 mi
• Early Texas A&M Campus Housing — 0.4 mi