Dose this Depot still exist? And if so who owns it? Shame to see a depot in such sad condition. Ship it on the Frisco! Murphy Millican
Please see the following link for an satellite view of the location of the Boynton, OK depot. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...223,-95.651447&spn=0.002459,0.006142&t=h&z=18 The depot's agent or operators bay faced southeast based on a review of Mircosoft Research Maps (the former terraserver-usa.com) topographic map. A house track extended behind the depot on the north side. Please see http://msrmaps.com/image.aspx?T=2&S=11&Z=15&X=650&Y=9870&W=3&qs=|boynton|ok| The depot is on its original site on the south side of Buckner Road south of the intersection with 6th Street. It sits diagonally northeast to southeast along the former railroad right of way. This location is 4 blocks east of US Highway 62 (a/k/a Oklahoma State Highway 72) on Buckner Road. Boynton was a station on the Muskogee Branch, Creek Subdivision, mile post 487.5. Boynton is the railroad mid point between Okmulgee (to the west - railroad north) and Muskogee (to the east - railroad south), and was 18.9 miles from each station. The depot is reportedly used for storage by a nearby resident. However, to date I have been unable to locate the specific address or other historical information on this structure. Any help in obtaining photographs, measurements, field notes or other documentation and posting it to this site would be greatly appreciated. Hope this helps. Thanks! Mark
Mark, Are you still interested in seeing some pictures and getting some measurements on this depot? I will be traveling from Tulsa to Muskogee next week and could stop and snap some pictures if they would be of any interest to anybody. I looked on Google Earth and it appears to still be there with trees growing up around it.
Paul, Any information, measurements or photographs you can develop would be wonderful. We should all be documenting equipment, facilities, scenes, etc as we travel. In just the last few years we have lost several cabooses to arson, many signal installations to modernization and a depot to a community's disinterest and neglect. Get the information now, because it may be gone tomorrow. The further we gat away from 11/21/80 at 3:10 PM Central Standard Time the less we have to enjoy. A paint job here, a fire, windstorm, acquisition, removal or other loss of information all hurt our efforts. Suspect we have all said more than once "I wish I had...." or "If only I had...." Many thanks to each of you that have worked to document, save, help preserve and share information about the Frisco. Hope this helps. Thanks! Mark
Traveled to Boynton today and took many pictures which will be loaded later this evening. I arrived to the location and was surprised to see that the depot was a large brick structure. I had assumed it would be wooden like so many other Frisco depots. I wondered why a depot in such a small town on an isolated branch would be built with such splendor, but internet research revealed to me that their was a brick factory in Boynton when the depot was built. Boynton had a population of 1400 in 1920 but has declined ever since. The 2010 population was 248, and the schools were shut down in 2011. The only business activity is a car wash, a food trailer parked at the main intersection, and some old stripper oil wells still pumping with antiquated equipment which I enjoy seeing still operate. The town is eerie and seems like a ghost town. There are many many structures and houses that are long abandoned, but very few have been torn down. The Depot is a beautiful structure that is very restorable. It would need some minor brick repairs and all of the wooden roof structure would need to be replaced. The depots undesirable ghost town location seems to be the reason for its survival, but ironically that is also the reason for its lack of preservation interest. I hope you all enjoy the pictures. It was really a fun location to visit. There are no fences or keep out signs around the depot so access is not a problem. I took my 9 year old son along and we both enjoyed the trip very much.
The pictures below start at the north end of the west wall and proceed south and wrap around the structure, back to the point of origin.
Some interior shots below. The freight room on the south end of the structure, and the large room on the north end of the structure have cement tile flooring and brick walls. The waiting rooms in the center of the structure have masonry covered walls and hardwood floors. Notice the door elevators are still in place above the large doors. The chimneys and vents are still intact on the roof.
The pictures below are some closer views of the windows and details. The walls in the sun are the east side, shaded walls are the west side. The structure was 80 feet long and almost 30 feet wide at the widest points.
Paul, I realize your post is old, but it is totally hidden in the summer months. Once the leaves are gone you can see it from the road and also walk up to and around it
I stopped by the Boynton depot last Tuesday morning. It has decayed a lot more as compared to the pictures shown above. A local citizen pulled up behind us and told us that the city of Boynton now owns the depot and that they want to do something to preserve it. I don't believe that will happen as the area is very economically depressed. There are lots of abandoned houses, churches boarded up, etc..
