White River Junction's historic sites trace the village's commercial, civic, railroad, and cultural development from the nineteenth century into the modern era through hotels, banks, stores, theaters, industrial buildings, transportation facilities, and public institutions. They include Hotel Coolidge, first built on this site in 1849 as the Junction House and later reconstructed twice after fires; the Old Courthouse and Post Office, where mail traveled from the railroad through a tunnel under the tracks until the post office moved in 1964 and the building served as a courthouse until 1990; early business buildings such as Cross Abbott, the Old Bank Building, the Old Progressive Market, the Greenough Block, the Gates Block, and the Tip Top Building; and sites of former structures such as a watering trough dedicated to the village's Loyal Club, the Crown Theater, the Smith Block, Interstate Tire, and Twin State Fruit. Other notable places include the Old Colony Building, home to the Surprise Department Store for more than sixty years; the former Swift and Company meat packing house, originally a grist mill; Miller Auto, identified as the oldest Cadillac Motor Car Dealership in the United States and remaining in the same family since 1902; the old New England Telephone Company office; the former White River Paper and Greydon Freeman building, whose top floor also served for many years as Masonic Hall; the Gates Library, which housed the village library until 2000; the first fire house with its four-story canvas hose drying tower; Engine 494, the last 4-4-0 American type B and M coal-fired steam locomotive built by the Manchester Locomotive Works of Manchester, New Hampshire; the 1937 Railroad Station, the fourth depot on that spot; and the Polka Dot Dinner, which has served railroad crews, college students, and local residents since the 1880s.