Perris Santa Fe Railroad Depot, Perris California

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Even before Perris Depot was completed, the site was the social and commercial center of the community. This is where the community received its merchandise, met friends, said goodbye to friends, embarked on a journey, or debarked from one. The names of the leading mercantile houses of the city are still written in lampblack on the freight house walls, indicating the location where all the freight for that business was to be left.

Before the arrival of the railroad, the Perris Valley (known then as the San Jacinto Plain) was largely vacant. With little reliable water and sparse vegetation, it had been largely bypassed by aboriginals and European settlers alike. A few miners worked gold diggings in the surrounding hills, but there were few bonanzas. Only one mine, the Good Hope, showed a profit over the years. Tin and asbestos were also produced, but never in significant commercial quantities. In 1882, the southern transcontinental railroad (composed of the Santa Fe, Atlantic and Pacific, and California Southern railroads) was completed through the region, linking Chicago with San Diego. Settlers as well as hopeful mineral seekers, came to the region

The original townsite of Pinacate was bypassed in the wake of land ownership disputes, and a group of investors persuaded the railroad to move its stop a mile and a half north in 1886. There had been various corporate shiftings and changes, but the railroad had by that time been absorbed into the main Santa Fe system. The railroad station relocation had been encouraged by the promise of the developers to name the new town after the line's Vice President and Chief Engineer Frederick Thomas Perris (1837-1916) and to build a new depot at the site. Though the townsite was platted by Mr. Perris in 1886, it wasn't until 1911 that it became an incorporated city. He also laid out the California Southern line through this area.

The property now occupied by the railroad depot was deeded by T. J. Fording, one of the group of San Bernardino businessmen who financed the founding of the town, to the California Southern Railroad on February 12^th, 1886. A "warehouse" is shown at this location on the 1886 plat of Perris

For some reason (most probably a slow struggle by the promoters to gather the necessary funds), it took another six years before the new depot was finished and presented to the railroad company in 1892. However, by this time, floods had several times washed out many miles of line southward toward San Diego, and a new line was built through Santa Ana Canyon, with Los Angeles the primary destination. San Diego has remained on a branch fine to this day. Perris, too, was off the main line, and plans to build the railroad repair shop here had been abandoned in favor of National City and, later, San Bernardino. However, a branch line to Hemet had opened in 1888, and the new depot would be a nice transfer facility.

The Perris Depot, which replaced the earlier wooden warehouse on the same location, was built by J. W. Nance, a prominent Perris builder and investor, and was designed by Benjamin Franklin Levet, Sr. (1864-1949). The latter, a son-in-law of Fred Perris, was the architect of numerous other railroad depots in California, including the magnificent La Grande station located between First and Second on Santa Fe Avenue in Los Angeles. It was the Santa Fe's principal depot in Los Angeles from its opening in 1893 to the opening of Union Station in 1939. Levet, at age 26, was also credited with designing the depots in San Juan Capistrano, Mentone, Patton, and East and West Highlands, among others. They were variously described as Moorish Arabian, Victorian, and Gothic

Two articles from the "Redlands Citrograph" recorded the progress of the depot:

The great southern California land boom of 1886-87 had largely bypassed the region, but an irrigation district was subsequently established, and water was contracted from Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains, proclaimed at the time to be the world's largest reservoir. So, not long after the depot was opened, settlers began arriving to establish small farmsteads whose long and narrow lots were well suited to gravity irrigation. Effusive tales of wonderful cornucopias spread widely, with all manner of exotic crops to be plucked once the land had water. Kadota Figs somehow had a particular appeal, and the largest of the early land subdivisions was called Figadota Farms. Unfortunately, the amount of water available from Big Bear turned out to be less than anticipated, and Perris Valley was cut off during the mid-1890s in favor of others with senior claims, particularly in the Redlands area. The depot turned out to be somewhat grander than business warranted, but remained the commercial and social center of the Valley for those who stayed to tough it out.

The faith was rewarded when what were believed to be unlimited underground aquifers were discovered and developed during the mid-1900s. By 1910, another boom was under way, this time involving the cultivation of alfalfa. Again, the depot and the railroad became the focus of intense activity. Alfalfa Days became the region's major harvest festival. Potatoes were introduced, and the local White Rose variety became particularly prized and a major traffic generator for the railroad.

For a time, the belief was encouraged that the direct line to San Diego would be rebuilt, and speculation was rife that electric interurban routes, already serving Riverside and San Bernardino, would soon be extended to Perris Valley. It was not to be. Elimination of service to Elsinore and Temecula through Railroad Canyon even ended the distinction of Perris as a junction point. Additionally, potato yields were declining somewhat by World War II because of aquifer depletion and salinization. The town languished as sort of a rural poverty pocket, with no sewers, unpaved streets, and a poor domestic water system. Despite all this, the Depot remained the most important building in the area.

World War II brought new activity, and the depot was again the major transportation center. In 1947, passenger service ended, but the coming of imported Colorado River water in 1953 gave the potato crop a new boost. The depot and the adjoining marshaling yard were bustling places during the annual "Spudrush" in late June through early August. By the end of the 1960s, though, the rising cost of the imported water, along with escalating land prices, in anticipation of urban sprawl, had made potatoes an uneconomical crop. In 1969, the freight agency was closed, and the depot structure was given to the Orange Empire Railway Museum for historic preservation. Title to the underlying property, however, remained with Santa Fe Industries until the recent transfer to public ownership.

In 1975, two of the four tracks in the station yard were abandoned, leaving only one siding to the east and the main line to the west of the depot Freight on the branch line remained mostly agricultural.

The Perris Valley Historical and Museum Association has housed its public exhibits in the freight house since 1974. For a short time in the early 1980s, the Perris Valley Chamber of Commerce used office space in the depot. None of these uses altered the physical structure in any way. Earlier, the railroad made minor alterations to accommodate changes after the end of regular passenger train service, but the only exterior modifications have been to rebuild one chimney and to enclose one entrance on the western elevation.

As a tribute to the Depot's historic significance, the Native Daughters of the Golden West placed a historical marker on the building in 1906.

Presently, the Orange Empire Railway Museum plans to develop the facility as the principal passenger terminal on its demonstration railway. With the completion of the sale of the Santa Fe's Perris and Hemet branch lines to the region's transportation authority, it is expected that the depot will again serve the City of Perris as a passenger facility on the planned Metrolink rail commuter system. The City now has some 28,000 residents, as against less than 200 in the town in 1892 and 3,276 as late as 1963.

Like many other towns and cities in southern California, passenger train service in Perris declined as more and more people traveled in the privacy of their automobiles. However, from 1947, when service ended in Perris, to 1969, when the resident freight agency office was closed, the adjacent yard continued to be used for marshaling refrigerator cars to haul potatoes to eastern markets. The close of the agency responded not only to the decline in potato farming but also to the increased use of automobiles by traveling freight agents as they interacted with their shippers. Once again, the automobile diminished the need for the functions of the station.

Building Description

The depot function has been at the present location since the railroad was first built in 1882, and the townsite first platted in 1886. The present depot building was completed in 1892. It sits along Fourth Street between C and D Streets in downtown Perris. The station lot comprises the space between the former Santa Fe main line track on the west, Fourth Street on the south, and the one remaining yard track on the east. Historically, there were several tracks in the local yard. The depot plat also includes a triangular landscaped area adjacent on the north.

Built of red brick, the Perris Depot is a classic example of High Victorian style, with a Queen Anne shingled, conical-roofed tower, an arched entrance way, round windows, and ornate finials. The gingerbread trim (the finials in particular) was machine cut and turned on lathes in an era when architectural decoration was turning away from hand craftsmanship, thus following the trend to Industrialization in America.

The building is oriented on a north to south axis and consists of two flanking wings with a central cross-axial mass and a two-story tower. The southern wing, has a hipped roof, small circular window openings, and raised loading dock openings with wooden doorways. The central mass has a main entrance on the east elevation. This entrance consists of an arched and inset entrance surrounded by small Romanesque columns that are connected by arched lattice work in their upper portions. The two broad-arched entryways, one on each side of the building, are of similar design. A projecting semi-circular bay is located directly below a decorative two-story tower. The tower has a false observation deck with a conical roof and a flagpole. Windows are of the wood sash type with decorative stained glass. Additional details include brickwork and shingling. The north wing has a hipped roof with gable.

The interior contains a large freight room at one end, with three freight doors whose base height is on a level with the raised floor within. Small circular windows at the end and side walls are found in the upper freight room walls. Next to this room is a small freight office at the rear side and a smaller open entry directly opposite at trackside next to the tower. This entry opens to the ticket office with rounded bay. Directly behind it, at the rear, is another open entry. That entry opens to the freight office, ticket office, and the adjoining waiting room, which also has an entry door at trackside. Next to the waiting room at the end is a small baggage room with three wide doors, a smaller one at the end and one large door on each side.

The doorways all have brick voussoirs. Brick-designed trimmings are evident in several places throughout the exterior walls and in the gabled ends of the upper-roof portions. Windows are mainly rectangular, with multipaned upper sashes. Similar designs appear in the entry door windows. The design and attention to the architectural detail is evident throughout the entire building and is, surprisingly, quite elaborate and attractive for a small-town railroad station

It stands today basically as it was in the 1890s, except that in later years a Swift train-order signal was added on the west side, plus an air conditioner. The interior is generally the same, except for modern facilities in the restrooms of the former waiting room. Other changes include gingerbread trim extended along the uppermost roof peak on the north office portion of the building. A large sign reading "Santa Fe Route" was fixed exactly halfway along the roof peak between the north side of the building and where the roof connects with the portion containing the tower.

North end of the depot (1993)

East face of the depot (1993)