The Depot

I’m one of those nerds who thinks American mass transportation never got any better after steam engines, so I get a huge kick out of the idea that choo-choos used to stop at Manawa.

These images date from about 1910 or so. The upper photo is from a card postmarked 1912. The lower one must be later than that, because they’ve installed at least one more set of tracks.

I used to live just a block from the tracks, and the three-track yard was fairly active when I was a kid. I had to learn to fall asleep while huge white and red Soo Line diesel engines stomped back and forth practically outside my front door; they could shake the foundations of the house when they torqued up their engines.

I originally reported that the tracks were all torn up, but it turns out they’re not! On a trip to Manawa in 2004 I was surprised to see that a single track goes through Royalton to Manawa, where it diverges into a two-track yard, and the small spur that goes downtown to the milk condensory and lumber yard is still there, too. The main line stops at Manawa, though; the tracks are pulled up just beyond the crossing, stopping short of where the grade crosses the river on a plate-girder bridge. The bridge, so far as I know, is still there.

The station building in the lower photo was built in January 1899 after Manawa’s first passenger station was destroyed by fire. It stood for 52 years and was considered the biggest and finest station on the Green Bay & Western line — that’s how a correspondent for the Manawa Advocate described it, anyway. He may have been influenced a bit by hometown pride.

The station was replaced in September 1951 with an unpainted cinderblock building on the opposite side of the tracks, just across the street from what was Sturm & Jensen’s gas station, not nearly as nice a building as this but by then there wasn’t any passenger traffic.

Many thanks to Scott Janz for the photos.

Every single gosh-darned word © 2004-2006 Dave Okonski