Hello from Fort Smith's Frisco Depot!

My name is Michael and I'm a Park Ranger at Fort Smith National Historic Site. In 2003 the National Park Service purchased the historic Fort Smith Frisco Depot and has been working to restore and preserve its historical appearance. Until now almost all of our work has been structural and we've done little to interpret the depot for the public. As the Chief of Interpretation for the park, I am in charge of educating the public about the park and depot's history and significance. That's what led me to this forum. I'm doing research on the building and the Frisco to begin developing exhibits and gearing up for opening the building for public tours later in the year. I look forward to learning from all of you.

 

That would be so cool to have. Hopefully one day we will. Right now we pretty much have a building and a neat collection of photos and other documents that people have given us.

 

Wonderful news.

 

I did some work in late 90's with the then owner but lost track of him and didn't know about the acquisition. It is good news and I'm sure several of our community will have info and material to contribute.

 

I may have been searching on books.google.com for the Hugo, Okla depot and information. I think that is where I came up with a photograph of the Fred Harvey Restaurant in possibly a restaurant supply or construction magazine. I bring this up as one possible way to search for information on Ft Smith depot. A company might have published a photograph of what they did. One rule on the MKT and other railroads, after telephones came in that if you lived within one or two miles of the place where you went to work, you didn't have to have a telephone and the caller had to come and call you for work. If you find the names of employees , you might be able to use the city directories to plot how far from the depot they worked.

 

Hi, I'm in the process of building a Ft Smith depot model based on how the depot looked in the late 1940's to early 1950's. Most of the outstanding photos I've seen has been 1973 or newer. Do any of the photos in the depot's museum show it during that time era? What color was the peaked roof on the southern half of building? Lastly was the small sub-structure on the southern end, that was at onetime the freezer, there during the above time era?

Joe

 

Joe, do you have drawings of the building? I have a magazine (somewhere) with the version before back half was two stories. I copied it and have a cut-out of the side elevation as a placekeeper on the layout. Mainline Modeler, I think; not sure how long it would take me to find it, although I should have put a tag in the issue.

 

Hi, yes I do have drawings Steve. I saw the floor plans that Keith had posted in the "N Scale Shelf Layout" thread and made my own drawing because I couldn't download them. Please post a copy of the side elevation if you will though.

Thank you,
Joe