Crawford Depot (Carroll, New Hampshire)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Crawford Depot is a historic railroad station at the top of Crawford Notch in the Bretton Woods area of Carroll, New Hampshire. Built in 1891 by the Maine Central Railroad, it is a notable example of Queen Anne railroad architecture and a reminder of how important the railroad was to making Crawford Notch a tourist destination. The depot was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Today it houses a visitor center and gift shop operated by the Appalachian Mountain Club, and it serves as the northern end of most Notch Train trips on the Conway Scenic Railroad.

The depot sits near U.S. Route 302 at the northwestern end of Saco Lake, with the Crawford Notch Highland Center just to the north. To the south lies the Conway Scenic Railroad platform. The building is a small, single-story wood-frame structure with a hip roof, decorative brackets, and an octagonal turret on the northwest corner. The main entrance faces the tracks, and the exterior features a mix of clapboards and shingles. Inside there are wooden finishes and a stone fireplace.

The railway through Crawford Notch was completed in 1875 by the Portland and Ogdensburg Railroad, which spurred tourism and the construction of large resort hotels at the notch’s top. The line was taken over by the Maine Central Railroad in 1888, and this depot was built in 1891 as one of the Mountain Division’s most elaborate stations. The nearby foreman’s house (built in 1887) and Crawford House hotel were prominent, but most hotels did not survive. The Crawford House burned in 1977, and today the Mount Washington Hotel remains while the AMC’s Highland Center sits on that site. The depot itself was converted to a gift shop by 1962.