Railroad Station

Saline grew up with the railroad. A stage-stop on the Chicago Road, Saline also contained a number of artisan workshops and mills, but it was not incorporated as a village until 1866. With the 1870 arrival of the Detroit, Hillsdale, and Indiana Railroad, Saline grew into the mercantile and shipping center of its portion of Washtenaw County. By the mid-1930's, with the advent of better roads, the trucking industry appropriated the freight traffic previously carried by rail. The Saline Depot, with its freight house, telegraph, and passenger facilities, would serve as the focal point of much of the economic and civic life of the community and its rural hinterlands. A relatively unassuming structure, the depot nevertheless was a necessary element in the development of Saline in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Without the access the depot afforded to the outside world, Saline would probably have gone the way of thousands of small Midwestern towns. But the story of the Saline depot is not only the story of Saline's growth, it is the story of Saline's integration into the larger economy of the country.

The Saline depot is a one-story, timber frame building located northeast of the intersection of North Ann Arbor and Bennett streets north of the Saline downtown area. The depot faces north on the now abandoned railroad line. It has a steeply pitched gable roof, the ridge of which is sited parallel with the tracks, and exterior walls finished in vertical board and batten. The broadly extending eaves are supported by open timber brackets. The depot has ground dimensions of fifty-three feet by twenty-nine feet six inches. A ramped loading dock fronting the north or track side provides access to the freight warehouse that occupies most of the easterly four-fifths of the building. The depot's west end contains a small office/waiting room area. The depot building is currently undergoing restoration/rehabilitation and will be used for a museum and meeting place.