Utah State Railroad Museum at Union Station

The Utah State Railroad Museum occupies Ogden Union Station, the historic junction of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads. The UP laid track through Ogden in March 1869 on its way to Promontory Summit, and after Brigham Young assembled parcels of land and donated them to the railroads in 1874, Ogden became the official junction point of the transcontinental railroad. A brick Romanesque Revival depot with a central clock tower replaced the first wooden station in 1889; after a 1923 fire gutted it, the present Spanish Colonial Revival building, designed by John and Donald Parkinson, rose on the old foundation and was completed in 1924. At its peak the station handled more than 60 passenger trains a day, but traffic collapsed after World War II, and ownership of the building passed to Ogden City in 1977 for conversion to a museum. Union Pacific's famous 844 (then numbered 8444) headlined the 1978 dedication, and in 1988 the State of Utah designated Union Station as the Utah State Railroad Museum — a move that spurred years of UP donations and built an extensive collection of locomotives and rolling stock on the station grounds. The final Amtrak Pioneer departed on May 11, 1997, ending passenger rail service at the depot.