The "Queen of the Rails"

Durand exists because of the railroads. In its heyday in the 1910s and 1920s, this little city was the busiest rail hub in Michigan after Detroit — two railroads, the Grand Trunk Western and the Ann Arbor, crossed here, and on a peak day something like 40 passenger trains and dozens of freight trains rolled through. The grand depot they shared, Durand Union Station, was built in 1903 in an eye-catching chateau-and-Romanesque style. It burned about a year and a half later and was rebuilt right away, and people have been photographing it ever since — it’s one of the most-photographed train stations in the country.

The trains thinned out as the rail industry declined, and by the 1970s the depot was abandoned and nearly torn down. The community saved it: the city bought it for a dollar in 1979, and the state later made it the home of the Michigan Railroad History Museum. Today you can still catch an Amtrak train here, dozens of freight trains rumble past daily, and inside there are railroad museums, a research library, and a model-railroad layout.

The depot is at 200 Railroad Street in Durand (durandstation.org).