Post Santa Fe Depot
Post, Garza County, Texas
Marker Inscription
After founding Post City in 1907, cereal manufacturer Charles William Post attracted railroads to the town, eventually convincing the Santa Fe Railroad to lay tracks on 1910. The following year, the company built the Post Santa Fe Depot. Designed by noted architect Louis Curtiss, the depot was constructed with reinforced concrete and terra cotta tiles. Between 1909 and 1911, Curtiss designed several depots in Texas, including examples in Lubbock, Snyder and Sweetwater that matched the Post depot. One of the few Curtiss designs that still exist in the United States, the Post Santa Fe Depot represents Post’s early economic development and technological progress. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2018
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After founding Post City in 1907, cereal manufacturer C.W. Post lured the Santa Fe Railroad to lay tracks in 1910, and the depot followed in 1911. Designed by the noted architect Louis Curtiss in reinforced concrete and terra cotta tile, it matched a family of depots Curtiss built across West Texas at Lubbock, Snyder, and Sweetwater. One of the few Curtiss designs still standing, the depot marks the moment a planned company town joined the national rail network.
Why it matters
The depot embodies how railroads made or broke early-20th-century Western towns, turning C.W. Post's Caprock experiment into a viable, connected community.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · C.W. Post
- · Louis Curtiss
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Wilson Mercantile Company
Wilson, TX
William Green founded the Wilson Mercantile in 1910 on West Texas school lands he and his associates had bought a few years earlier, then drew the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway to the spot and watched a town grow around his store. He brought in farmers and tenants, many from his home county, and ran vast ranch holdings nearby. His original frame store gave way to this 1917 building, later restored by his daughter-in-law into a repository of the pioneering era.
Rockwell Lumber Company Office Building
Slaton, TX
In 1911 Rockwell Brothers and Co. bought land from the Pecos and Northern (Santa Fe) Railway to open a lumberyard serving the brand-new railroad town of Slaton. This two-story vernacular building housed the company office, with living quarters above for the manager and his family — Robert W. Parker being the first to occupy it. It remained the main office until Rockwell closed its Slaton operation in 1941.
Slaton
Slaton, TX
Slaton owes its very existence to the Santa Fe Railroad. When the Pecos and Northern Texas branch reached the South Plains in 1911, banker O. L. Slaton — who had helped secure the right-of-way — lent his name to the brand-new townsite, which opened for business only a month after its first lots sold. As a railroad division point complete with a Harvey House, roundhouse, and machine shops, Slaton boomed almost overnight into a farming and ranching hub.
Slaton Harvey House
Slaton, TX
Slaton was born of the railroad: the Santa Fe bought this ranchland in 1911 for a division point and, a year later, built both a depot and a Harvey House. Part of the chain founded by Scottish immigrant Fred Harvey, the Slaton house served elegant meals to travelers around a horseshoe counter, staffed by the famed 'Harvey Girls' who roomed upstairs. A commercial and social hub for thirty years, it briefly reopened to feed troops during World War II before the building lived on as a depot into the 1980s, later rescued by local preservationists.