- Location
- Garden Street at Coyle
- Years
- 1929 - 1966
- Now
- Palmilla Apartments
The St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (Frisco) made an ambitious expansion into the southeast with the purchase of Muscle Shoals, Birmingham and Pensacola Railroad in 1925. The purchase included the port facility along Pensacola Bay that is now Community Maritime Park. The company completed the final connection to their main railroad network on June 28, 1928. Frisco’s first passenger train arrived in Pensacola on September 1st of that year. A handsome, Spanish mission-style passenger depot on West Garden Street was completed early in 1929 near the newly dedicated World War I memorial.
By 1956, however, average ridership had fallen to just 3 ½ people per train. Frisco ended service but donated locomotive #1355, “The Pride of Pensacola,” to replace the war memorial in the Garden Street median. After a brief second life as traffic offices, vandalism and neglect led to the depot’s demolition in 1966.
