Tenino Depot Museum

The depot was built in 1914 by the Northern Pacific Railway on its main line between Portland and Tacoma, constructed of local sandstone in a modernized Richardsonian style with arched windows — fitting for a town whose economy was built on quarrying stone used in landmark buildings across the Pacific Northwest. Passenger service ended in the 1950s, freight lingered into the 1960s, and the station closed for good in 1965, then sat abandoned for a decade. In 1975, rather than demolish the surplus building, the Burlington Northern Railroad (Northern Pacific's successor) gave it to the City of Tenino, which proposed moving it next to the Quarry House and the Tenino Stone Company Quarry as part of a new historic district. The city refurbished the depot and opened it as the Tenino Depot Museum, a local-history museum whose exhibits include the press used to make the original wooden money, quarry and logging tools, railroad memorabilia, and period artifacts. The depot was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.