San Carlos Depot - The Stone Station That Started a Town

Photo: Sanfranman59, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)

A stop on San Carlos History Walk, a free self-guided tour.

You are standing beside the oldest public building in San Carlos. The Southern Pacific Railroad built this depot in 1888, when the land around you was still mostly cattle pasture and oak groves. Instead of the usual wooden station, the railroad chose heavy rough-cut sandstone, round arches and a steep roof in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, a rare look for a California depot.

Local accounts say Leland Stanford, a friend of landowner Nathaniel Brittan, lent stonemasons and spare sandstone from the building of his new university in Palo Alto. Brittan had earlier let the tracks cross his land on the condition that a station agent and telegraph office be kept here.

For years this was the whole civic center: it served as the town's first church, library and post office. Railroad use of the building ended in 1967, and today's station beside it opened in 1997. Walk around it and look for the deep window arches and the marker placed for its 1988 centennial.

Getting here: Start at the sandstone depot beside the Caltrain platforms at 599 El Camino Real, where San Carlos Avenue meets the tracks.

Did you know?: The depot is on the National Register of Historic Places, and it looks strikingly like the Kenwood depot in Sonoma County, which Southern Pacific opened the same year.

Photo op: Step back across the depot plaza far enough to fit the whole stone front, its arches and the tall roofline in one frame.

More on Wikipedia: San Carlos station · Southern Pacific Railroad · Leland Stanford · Richardsonian Romanesque

Stops on this tour

1. San Carlos Depot - The Stone Station That Started a Town
2. Arguello Site - Lamchin Land and the Rancho of Fleas
3. Brittan Party House - A Bohemian Hunting Lodge
4. Elm Street - Victorian Hopes for a Paper Town
5. City Hall - From Schoolhouse to the City of Good Living
6. Casa de Flores - A Church for a Growing Town
7. Terminal Way - Where San Carlos Learned to Fly
8. Brittan Avenue - Airstrip, Racetrack and Radio Tubes
9. Museum of San Carlos History - The Firehouse, Rebuilt
10. Laurel Street - Main Street of the City of Good Living