Durand became a railroad center after the Detroit and Milwaukee Railway brought its first rail service in 1856, followed by the Chicago & North Eastern Railroad in 1877 and the Toledo, Ann Arbor and North Michigan in 1885. The Grand Trunk Railway System and the Ann Arbor Railroad built the depot in 1903 for $60,000 to serve thousands of passengers, and after a fire nearly destroyed it in 1905, a near-replica was completed within six months. Designed by Detroit architects Spier & Rohns, the 239-foot-long station originally included a large waiting room, dining room, lunch counter, baggage and express mail areas, and telegraph and railroad offices, and it was built of Missouri granite brick and Bedford cut stone. Once the largest station in outstate Michigan and one of the largest in a small town in the United States, it saw the last Grand Trunk Western Railroad passenger train stop there in 1971, passenger service resume with Amtrak in 1974, and city acquisition in 1979. On March 27, 1960, Grand Trunk Western train No. 56 departed for Detroit as the last regularly scheduled passenger train in the United States pulled by a steam locomotive.