To explore the history of Union Station, you have to start more than 50 years before it was built: the 1850s. Texas wasn’t an easy place to do business back then. Commerce depended on transportation, which typically meant waterways, but none of the waterways in North Texas were deep enough to allow for reliable ship travel. The answer? Railroads.

By the time construction of Chicago architect Jarvis Hunt’s Union Terminal began in 1914, Texas railroads already had gained a lot of steam. Nine passenger lines served Dallas, which was the state’s first rail crossroads and owed its status as a commercial center to that fact. But that success meant problems for the city: Freight trains ran through the heart of downtown, and passenger terminals were spread many blocks apart. Dallas leaders knew that a “union station” would consolidate train traffic in one location, making streets safer. Dallas Union Terminal officially opened the same day as the State Fair of Texas, Oct. 14, 1916. The new station was designed to handle as many as 50,000 passengers a day, and as many as 80 trains a day once passed through it.

The last privately-owned passenger train left Union Station on May 31, 1969, and Amtrak took over passenger service in 1971. By the early spring of 1974, the Union Terminal Company had fallen victim to progress, but freight trains continue to roll along the station’s tracks to this day.