About Us

The Las Cruces Railroad Museum is located in the historic Santa Fe Depot. The museum interprets the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad’s impact of the railroad on the Mesilla Valley and Las Cruces. Photographs, artifacts, and text panels throughout the museum interpret local history, railroadiana, and the history of several local AT&SF employees. There are three model layouts including one everyone is invited to run.

The museum also offers lectures, classes for adults and children, and guided tours for large groups by appointment. We host two major events each year: the Old Fashioned Holiday Display on the first Friday of December from 5-8pm and Railroad Days which will be held on May 9, 2009. Please see our Education page for more information on these public programs.

1901 Depot courtesy Rio Grande Archives at NMSU

1881
The first Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe (AT&SF) train arrived in Las Cruces on April 26, 1881 and regular passenger started in June of that same year. The original depot (seen above) was a wooden structure that housed the passenger and freight businesses as well as the agent’s family. It was built on the far western edge of Las Cruces. The neighborhood that grew up around it is the Alameda-Depot Historic District. (The District, of which the depot is a part, is on the New Mexico and National Registers of Historic Places.)

1910s
As the AT&SF expanded their operations, the railroad built a new depot in Las Cruces a few hundred yards south of the original building and moved the wooden depot to La Tuna (now Anthony, TX). A.W. Anson, a contractor from Albuquerque, finished the new brick depot in 1910. In an effort to make the building fit into its environment, the AT&SF took a standard design, made it more southwestern with stucco and exterior eaves extending over the waiting area windows. This new facing gave the building a more “Mission Revival” look more common to New Mexico towns.

1960s
Passenger service continued from this new depot until 1968. Freight service, run by the Railway Express Agency, had started in 1881 alongside passenger service. The railroad built freight additions to the depot in 1910 and in 1968.

1980s
Eventually competition from truck and air freight companies and advances in communication technology caused the railroad to close many stations. The Santa Fe Railroad closed Las Cruces’ depot doors in 1988.

Present
The City of Las Cruces purchased it in 1992. The depot opened as a museum in 2000 on a limited basis. It closed again briefly in 2007 and then opened with its present hours in December 2007.

The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad Company owns and operates the “live” tracks west of the depot. Their freight trains still use the tracks, and all week long trains come from El Paso, Albuquerque and points beyond, delivering and picking up train cars for local and regional businesses.

For more information on the Railroad Era in Las Cruces, please visit the Las Cruces: Crossroads of History website.