Old Depot Museum

The Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston was the first railroad built south of the transcontinental Union Pacific to pass through Lawrence. Construction of the 30 miles of track to Ottawa in 1867-8 was difficult, and veterans of Union Pacific construction, including Chinese laborers, struggled through terrible weather in the fall of 1867. The line went into receivership in 1873, and the Kansas City, Lawrence and Southern Kansas Railroad emerged from its failure. That new line operated throughout the 1880s and built the Ottawa depot in 1888. By then it was leasing much of its line to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, which purchased the line by 1895. In 1962 the depot building was donated to the Franklin County Historical Society for use as a museum, and in 1995 the AT&SF merged with the Burlington Northern to become the Burlington Northern Santa Fe. The LL&G locomotive Ottawa carried rails and ties across a temporary bridge over the Kansas River in Lawrence, the railroad gained a reputation for corruption and the nickname Lazy, Lousy and Greasy, Isaac Kalloch used his influence to locate the railroad shops in Ottawa, George P. Washburn designed the Ottawa depot, and from the LL&G through the SK and the AT&SF, shops just northwest of the depot manufactured railroad cars and serviced locomotives with a roundhouse and turntable.

Ottawa, Kansas · United States