Grand Island Union Pacific Railroad, ca. 1891
Two jaunty young men perch atop a railroad boxcar with Grand Island's first Union Pacific passenger depot and hotel in the background. The young man wearing the bowler hat sits on the hand-break of the boxcar. On the horizon at the far left behind the young men, can be seen the grain elevator of Louis A. Von Wasmer, 600 block East Fourth Street.

The Union Pacific depot and hotel-eating house, built in 1875, blocked what is today the Oak Street crossing of the U.P. tracks. This photograph, likely taken in the early 1890s from the south side of the U.P. tacks looking northeast, shows the hotel-eating house after its extensively 1885 remodeled. The two buildings were on the north side of the U.P. tracks facing south. Oak Street, after 1900, would run between where these two structures sat. The U.P. operations at this site were abandoned with the opening of the second depot in the fall of 1892 near Front and Locust Streets. The depot shown here was moved west in 1892, across from the new depot, and used as a dispatch and telegraph office. The hotel was eventually moved to a site in the 500 block of North Pine Street and used as a rooming house. The "new" 1892 depot was replaced by the once-glamorous 1918 U.P. passenger depot, which was razed in 1967 to make way for today's United States Post Office.

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