La Crosse Station: The Milwaukee Road Depot
Wisconsin
The La Crosse train station was built in nineteen twenty-six and twenty-seven by the Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad, the line everyone called the Milwaukee Road. It replaced an older depot that had burned in nineteen sixteen. Architect A.
O. Lagerstrom gave it a dignified facade in keeping with the railroad's ambitions in this river city, which had been a major Mississippi crossing point since the eighteen fifties. The building outlasted the railroad itself, which went bankrupt in nineteen seventy-seven.
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and restored in two thousand one. Today it serves as an active Amtrak station on the Empire Builder and Borealis routes, still linking La Crosse to Chicago and to the Pacific Northwest just as the Milwaukee Road intended nearly a century ago.
