El Garces Intermodal Transportation Facility
Needles, Italy
El Garces Intermodal Transportation Facility (also known as Needles station) is an Amtrak intercity rail station and bus depot in downtown Needles, California. The structure was originally built in 1908 as El Garces, a Harvey House and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (ATSF) station. It is name
d for Francisco Garcés, a Spanish missionary who surveyed the area in the 1770s. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. The Southern Pacific Railroad and ATSF subsidiary Atlantic and Pacific Railroad met at Needles and opened a station there in 1883. The Southern Pacific sold its line to the ATSF the next year, and Needles became a major waypoint on the ATSF route to Los Angeles. After the original station was destroyed by fire in 1906, the ATSF built El Garces – a large neoclassical structure containing a Harvey House hotel, restaurant, and train station – in 1908. It was the "crown jewel" of the Harvey House network, and among the first train stations made of concrete. The hotel and restaurant closed in 1949 as passenger traffic declined. The ATSF converted the interior for office space and baggage use in the 1950s, and demolished the eastern third of the building...
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