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Business & Tech

Then & Now: The Depot

The many lives of the Depot Bookstore & Cafe at Depot Plaza, from trains and buses to books and lattes.

As they stop into the at , observant visitors and Mill Valley newcomers might notice that this small building has the character of an old train station. History buffs in particular might strongly suspect that it was indeed a train station at one time.

And they would be correct. 

The birth of Mill Valley happened in large part due to the train that brought its first potential buyers to town in 1890 for the original land auction. The train tracks were laid before the first lot was sold.

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The Depot has been a book store and cafe for nearly 40 years, but it has always been a transit hub. Rail service to Mill Valley began in 1889. For the first few years, it was a steam burning train that brought passengers from Sausalito who had taken the ferry from San Francisco.

In 1900, the trains switched to burning oil, and were electrified shortly after the turn of the century. The electric train continued to bring passengers to Mill Valley until 1940. Freight trains, which ran on oil, would continue to sporadically run into Mill valley until the early 1950s.

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The first Train Depot was a small building located about 100 yards south of the current Depot Plaza. It was replaced by a larger train station in 1895 close to where the parking lot of the parlor currently sits. The station contained a ticket office, waiting room, ice cream parlor, and tobacco shop. 

A large covered train shed provided protection from the snow, as the design was surely a replica of an east coast train station, where the sheds would have actually been needed for the snow. In 1903, the shed was torn down and the large portion of this building was  moved  north a few hundred feet to the Depot's current location.

This old building was demolished in 1928 and replaced by the building that still stands today. The station was built by the Northwestern Pacific Railroad. It served as the train station to receive passengers from 1929 until the last passenger train came to downtown in October 1940. The clock tower on the northwest side was was donated to the people of Mill Valley by the Mill Valley Volunteer Firemen's Association.

From the early 1940s to the 1970s, Greyhound was the primary bus service for commuters to San Francisco and the depot morphed into a bus depot, as depicted in this week's Then photo. Golden Gate Transit began service in 1971, bringing the colorful green and white commuter buses to Marin.

The book depot today is owned by the city of Mill Valley and they lease it out to the bookstore and coffee shop. They also lease out a small office on the north side to the .

An entirely different story remains to be told about the charming Mount Tam Railway that began here at the plaza and took tourists to the top of Mt Tam. The Mount Tam Railway was in service from 1896 until 1929. This colorful story will be told on a different day.

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