Merci Train Boxcar

This weathered boxcar carried a nation's thanks. After the war, when Americans shipped a Friendship Train of relief supplies to a devastated France, French citizens answered in 1949 with the Merci Train, forty-nine boxcars filled with fifty tons of gifts, one car for each state. More than six million families gave from their own homes, small treasures and mementoes packed into cars that had once hauled soldiers. Arizona's boxcar, restored to its 1949 condition, survives here as a token of gratitude between two countries, an object lesson in what ordinary people send across an ocean.

What the plaque says

A Gift of Friendship. This boxcar is one of 49 that comprised the French Gratitude Train. Once filled with 50 tons of gifts, the Gratitude Train was a way for the people of France to thank the American people for their help during and after World War II. More than six million French families contributed gifts from their own possessions to fill the cars, which were distributed to each state after their arrival in the United States in 1949. The boxcar belonging to Arizona has been restored to its 1949 condition.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Taliesin West — 6.5 mi
  Frank Lloyd Wright's desert masterwork, grown from the ground it stands on
• Heard Museum — 9.7 mi
  The Native Southwest, told in the first person
• Phoenix — 11 mi
  The fifth-largest US city, built on the canals of a thousand-year-old one

More markers nearby

• Charles Miller — 3.0 mi
• Winfield Scott Memorial — 3.1 mi
• Sterling Drug Store — 3.1 mi
• The Little Red Schoolhouse — 3.1 mi