The East Ely Depot was placed on the National Register in 1984. In 1993, the East Ely Depot was listed as a contributing building for the Nevada Northern Railway East Ely Yards and Shops Historic District and again in 2006 when the Historic District became a National Historic Landmark on September 20, 2006. The Depot is now the focal point of the White Pine Historical Railroad Foundation’s Nevada Northern Railway which operates a variety tourist train rides.
The Nevada Northern Railroad Passenger Depot of East Ely was built in 1907. Architecturally, it is a well designed example of a vernacular railroad depot which combines Mission Revival and Renaissance Revival stylistic elements. Culturally, the depot is a reminder of the major impact the railroad had on this area. The establishment of the Nevada Northern Railroad provided the basis for White Pine County's economic development. It allowed ore mined at Ruth, seven miles west of Ely, to be transported to McGill, thirteen miles north of Ely for smelting. It was then shipped via the Nevada Northern to the main Southern Pacific line, where it was transported to refineries and markets in the East. The copper industry was responsible for White Pine County’s prosperity for much of the twentieth century, and it determined the character of the communities of Ely, Ruth, and McGill. The high design quality of this depot reflects the railroad’s prominence when it began its operations in 1907
In its early years the lower floor of the depot was used as a ticket office, baggage area, and divided waiting room with men’s and women’s benches. The upper floor housed offices of the Nevada Northern personnel. Passenger service ceased in 1941, the first floor was then used for storage and offices. The second floor was used for Nevada Northern Railroad offices until 1981 when the personnel using the depot were moved to the Kennecott offices in McGill.
In the late 1980s, Kennecott donated a portion of the railroad as well as the railroad's yard and shop facilities to the White Pine Historical Railroad Foundation which today operates the property as the Nevada Northern Railway Museum. The ground floor of the East Ely Depot is operated by the Foundation for ticket sales and gift shop for the Railway. The second floor of the Depot is operated by the State of Nevada as the East Ely Railroad Depot Museum which preserves the contents of the Kennecott offices as they were when Kennecott closed them in 1981.
Much of the history above comes from the National Register of Historic Places files: (
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The following information also comes from NRHP files: (
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Located on the south side of the District, on Avenue A centered at the northern terminus of 11th Street, the Depot and General Offices was constructed in 1907 and designed by the Architect Frederick Hale. It is a functional, two-story hip-roofed building to which the architect appended on the north and south sides espadana parapets which lend it a touch of Mission Revival style, at that time at the height of popularity in the West. The building exhibits high design quality and is individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places for architectural, cultural and historical significance. The 40 by 80-foot building rests on a concrete block foundation atop a basement which originally housed a boiler for the building’s steam heating system. The first story walls are of stone construction, 20 inches thick, with the exterior laid up in rusticated coursed ashlar, alternating wide and narrow courses of stone giving the building a distinctive banded appearance. The second story walls, separated from the first story by a belt course, are of wood frame construction faced with cement plaster on metal lath. Fenestration consists of one-over-one and two-over-two double-hung, wood sash windows with projecting wooden lug sills. Three single and two double doors provide access to the south elevation, with four single and two double doors in the north (primary) elevation, facing the tracks.
The building has a steeply-pitched hip roof clad in composition shingles. Its eaves are open with exposed rafter tails carrying wooden gutters. A shed roof carried on carved brackets extends the full length of the north side of the Depot to provide weather protection at trackside for passengers awaiting a train.
Triple, round-headed, arched attic vents pierce the espadana parapets. Projecting roundels on the south side contain stone letters spelling out the current station name - EAST ELY. At one time they read ELY CITY and at another, just ELY. On the north elevation, a bay window extends out from both the first and second stories, a typical feature to house a dispatcher or telegraph operator who by means of the bay would look up and down the tracks which passed the depot.
Some minor alterations were made to the depot in 1918, when the express room was remodeled to add additional counters and shelving, and in subsequent years. It was found that passengers awaiting trains on the north side, many of them miners with steel tools in their Levis, leaned against or sat on the stone window lintels, chipping and damaging the stone. Consequently, a horizontal round iron rail, painted black and capped with continuous sharp pyramidal projections or “sharks’ teeth,” was fitted along the north elevation at window sill height to discourage patrons from leaning against the stonework. These alterations are considered historic, a part of the building’s early history.
The first story contains nine rooms, including a ticket office and separate women’s and men’s waiting rooms and a baggage and express room with a scale, while the second floor contains twelve offices. Parts of the first floor, the second floor hallway, the staircase, and second floor offices on the north side of the building have a four-foot high wainscot of dark, varnished wood to match the doors, door frames, and window frames. Many original light switches remain in place as does much original brass door hardware, not to mention pebbled glass windows in many of the interior doors, only a few having been broken and replaced with a modern frosted glass. The principal changes to the interior are electric baseboard heating and modern ceiling lights and storm windows on the south side. The significance of the buildings at East Ely extends in almost every case to the interior details and to the original furnishings within. Except for the gift shop in the northeast corner of the ground floor, the rooms in this building have their original furnishings intact, so that stepping into almost any of them is like stepping back into time seventy-five to a hundred years ago. Wooden desks, tables, chairs, filing cabinets, wall cabinets, and the like, abound. Within wall cabinets are two or three generations of typewriters, adding machines, and other office devices; the railroad apparently neglected to discard old models it had replaced by simply putting them in storage. In the northwest room, back to back vaults by Herring-Hall-Martin Safe Company, still serve as storage. One room marked “Private” on the north side upstairs was the railroad’s “Stationery” or “form” storeroom, whose bare wood shelves contain stacks of unused old railroad forms, as they have had for nearly a century. The interior throughout this building is as interesting and evocative of a past long gone as is the exterior, and the significance and integrity extends not only to interior architectural details but to original furnishings as well.
The Depot and General Office Building was one of the two most important buildings in the District (along with the Engine House and Machine Shop). It is now owned by the State of Nevada and administered as the East Ely Railroad Depot Museum, which is subordinate to the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, a part of the Nevada state park system under the Department of Cultural Affairs.