Durand: Forty-Two Trains a Day Through Michigan's Railroad Capital
Near Flint, Michigan
In the early nineteen hundreds, forty-two passenger trains, twenty-two mail trains, and seventy-eight freight trains passed through the small Shiawassee County town of Durand every single day. The reason was geography: three rail lines crossed at grade here, making Durand the largest railroad junction in Michigan outside of Detroit. The depot built to handle it all, completed in nineteen oh five after a fire destroyed the original nineteen oh three structure, still stands in a striking Chateau Romanesque style that made it one of the most photographed train stations in the country.
Today it houses the Michigan Railroad History Museum. The town itself incorporated in eighteen eighty-seven, taking the name Durand in honor of Michigan congressman George Durand of Flint. The trains are gone, but the grand station remains, a monument to the days when this small town was the crossroads of a state.
