Mayville saved its old depot, then filled it with the town's memory

A small village named for its founder runs a museum out of the building that made the village possible. Mayville was started in 1865 by Dexter Choat, but it didn’t really become a town until the railroad arrived in 1882 and gave the place a depot, a reason for people to stop, and a way to ship its lumber and crops out. For the next century the depot was the front door of Mayville.

By 1986 the railroad was done with it, and the old station was headed for the wrecking crew — the fate of most small-town depots once the trains quit stopping. Mayville didn’t let it go. Residents moved the whole building to a new spot and saved it, and the saved depot became the home of the Mayville Area Museum of History and Genealogy. The museum itself was older than the rescue; a group of locals had founded it back in 1972 to keep their town’s records from scattering.

Inside, it leans into exactly the things a small farming community cares about. There’s an extensive obituary file and cemetery readings — the kind of thing genealogists drive a long way for — alongside the everyday artifacts of Thumb life. Out on the grounds sits a log cabin furnished as a one-room schoolhouse, the schoolhouse standing in for all the little district schools that once dotted the township.

What’s nice about the place is how complete the loop is. The depot brought the town to life, the town nearly lost the depot, the town chose to keep it, and now the depot keeps the town — its names, its dates, its dead, its school desks. You can stand in a building that used to sell train tickets and read the obituary of someone who probably bought one.