Center Point Depot

1939.  Kerr County Historical Commission Collection.

Date unknown.

2013

The peripatetic 1877 San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad Depot of Center Point, has returned to Center Point from Boerne and is being restored.  It is now in a historic park on San Antonio Street.

The depot has not just seen a lot of travelers, it has also done a lot of traveling.  It isn't unusual for old buildings in Kerr County to be moved to new spots.  It is unusual for one to move multiple times.

The depot was closed after the last train ran in 1971. A story in the September 1, 2012, Kerrville Daily Times, about the return of the depot to Center Point said that in 1984 it was moved to Kerrville where it then served as a private home for almost a decade. 

C.D. Peterson was the one received a permit to move the depot to Kerrville in October 1984. While in Kerrville it was located near the corner of Texas 16 North and Loop 534. A few years later it was sold again and moved to Boerne where it housed offices for a few years. The Center Point Historical Preservation Association raised the money to move the depot back to Center Point in 2012, and is now raising money to complete restoration of the building.

The January 24, 1995, Daily Times reported on an effort by the Comfort Area Development Board to move the depot to that community. The project was apparently unsuccessful. That story called this the second depot building in Center Point.

The December 5, 1984, Kerrville Mountain Sun recounted the memories of Fred Toler, who was a railway agent at Center Point in 1934-35, then again from 1937 for a while. He tells this story:

One day Mr. Holchak [the Southern Pacific agent in Kerrville] told me that the agent's job at Center Point was coming open and he thought I could handle the job. ... Myrtle Elizabeth Baker and I ... decided this was our chance to get married.

... Myrtle and I went down to Center Point and looked things over and as we would be flat broke until we received our first pay check we decided to move into a large room connected to the depot.

Myrtle's mother gave us a table and two chairs, my mother contributed a bed and mattress, the kinfolks gave us a shower of household goods.  

We had no honeymoon as we had to go to work the day after [we were married].

The Center Point job paid $50 per month, which looked like a small fortune to us.

The first night we stayed in the depot we had just laid down when we heard a commotion and looking out the window we saw about fifty people coming towards the depot.

We were both somewhat uneasy, but I put my clothes on and went out to see what was up.  A man named Frank Lane headed the group and he told me that it was customary whenever anyone got married in the town to "chiveree" them.

Mr. Lane explained that it was the town custom to "serenade" newly couples and that we were supposed to furnish refreshments.  They had brought along a fiddle and guitar player and we would have a dance.

The only refreshments we had was coffee, but they didn't seem to mind.  So the music was set upon the large outside unloading platform and the dance when on until about midnight when everyone went home.

... About the time we received our first check the Superintendent of the S.P. dropped off a train one day and told us we would have to move out of the Depot and rent a house.  

We rented one-half of a duplex for $12 a month.  It was one of the few houses in town that had inside plumbing." 

A true luxury!

After about a year he was transferred to Fredericksburg Junction, about five miles below Comfort, the first of several transfers in his railroad career. (Fredericksburg Junction should not be confused with Frederickburg. It sat in the middle of nowhere and was the spot where the Fredericksburg and Northern Railway connected with the S.A.&A.P.)