Salem Depot Museum

The Depot Railroad Museum is part of the John Hay Center, the Washington County Historical Society's campus on the eastern edge of the Salem Downtown Historic District in Salem, Indiana. The building was constructed to resemble the original Salem depot that Confederate general John Hunt Morgan burned during his 1863 raid through Indiana — an event the museum still memorializes with a money chest that Morgan's Raiders opened looking for cash; when it yielded only tools, the depot was put to the torch. The modern museum was dedicated on September 22, 2001, driven largely by retired local newspaper editor Cecil Smith, whose collection formed its core; grants from contributors funded the building, and 39 students helped move the model trains into the new structure. It displays railroad memorabilia alongside panoramas depicting the Washington County landscape in earlier times. The surrounding John Hay Center also includes the Hay-Morrison House — birthplace of John Hay, Abraham Lincoln's private secretary and later Secretary of State, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1971 — plus an 1840s-style pioneer living village and the Stevens Memorial Museum, built in 1970 with a genealogy center.