Why go
The station’s history gives context to its position at 17th and Wynkoop Streets in LoDo. It connects Denver’s 1870 rail link to Cheyenne, the 1881 shared depot and the rebuilding that produced the central portion opened in 1914. Read this as historical background before looking at the building.
The full story
Denver was bypassed by the first transcontinental rail route, so residents backed a link north to Cheyenne. The Denver Pacific connection opened in 1870 and helped the town grow as a regional supply center. Yet rail passengers still faced a fragmented arrival: by 1875, four separate stations served different lines. The railroad owners agreed to a shared terminal at 17th and Wynkoop Streets, and Union Station opened in 1881. The depot changed as traffic and the city changed. Fire damaged its center in 1894, leading to a larger Romanesque Revival replacement. In the early twentieth century, operators rebuilt the central portion again; the Beaux-Arts section opened in 1914. A major redevelopment in the 2010s renewed the station complex. These layers explain why “Union Station” refers to a continuing rail hub and a sequence of buildings, rather than one untouched nineteenth-century structure.