Denver Union Station opened in 1881 and immediately established itself as one of the most important railroad junctions in the American West. At its peak, 80 trains a day passed through its platforms. Today, after a $500 million regeneration, it's the centerpiece of Denver's most vibrant neighbourhood and a genuine piece of living American history.
The Railroad That Made Denver
Denver's existence as a major city is almost entirely the product of railroad politics. When the transcontinental railroad was planned in the 1860s, the main line was routed through Cheyenne, Wyoming — not Denver. Denver's boosters, led by businessman David Moffat and territorial governor John Evans, responded by building their own rail connections to join the transcontinental system. The Denver Pacific Railroad, completed in 1870, connected Denver to Cheyenne. The Kansas Pacific, also 1870, connected it east. Within a year of getting railroad service, Denver's population more than doubled. The city's fate was sealed by iron and steam, not gold.
The 1881 Station and the Beaux-Arts Rebuild
The original 1881 station burned down in 1894. A replacement was built the same year. That station was then replaced entirely in 1914 by the current Beaux-Arts building — a grand civic monument with a 65-foot arched windows, marble floors, and the famous "TRAVEL BY TRAIN" sign on the east facade that you still see today. The 1914 station was designed to handle the passenger volumes of a booming industrial city. At its peak, it processed 80 trains and up to 10,000 passengers daily — cattlemen, mining engineers, soldiers heading to both World Wars, and the full socioeconomic range of early 20th-century America.
The Decline
What happened to Denver Union Station is what happened to almost every grand American rail station: the car won. By the 1960s, passenger traffic had dropped so severely that the station's upper floors were converted into office space for the Employment Security Administration. By the 1980s, the building was structurally deteriorating, the neighborhood around it — what Denver called "Skid Row" — was defined by abandoned warehouses and a visible homeless population. The station was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, which protected it from demolition but not from continued decline.
The Regeneration
The turnaround began with the "LoDo" (Lower Downtown) movement of the 1980s and 90s, in which Denver's historic warehouse district began attracting artists, restaurants, and eventually serious real estate investment. Coors Field (opened 1995) just east of the station accelerated the process. The station itself was transformed between 2012 and 2014 in a $500 million public-private partnership: the 1914 Great Hall was restored and reopened as a hotel lobby and food hall, the platforms were rebuilt for the new regional rail system, and the bus facility was rebuilt underground. The surrounding Union Station neighborhood has become one of Denver's highest-value zip codes, with restaurants, hotels, and the new 33-acre Commons Park along the South Platte River.
The Building Today
The station's Great Hall is now the lobby of the Crawford Hotel, but remains public and open around the clock. The Terminal Bar occupies one side, the Tattered Cover bookshop occupies another, and the central hall with its original terrazzo floors and vaulted ceiling functions as a public living room for downtown Denver. The commuter rail A Line to Denver International Airport departs from Platform 1 every 15 minutes. Amtrak's California Zephyr — one of America's great long-distance trains, running from Chicago to San Francisco through the Rockies — still passes through Union Station every morning. It's worth taking the train somewhere if only to experience a departure from what is now one of the most beautiful station interiors in the American West.