Standish's stone depot, built from fieldstones farmers hauled by wagon

When the Michigan Central Railroad wanted a depot in Standish in 1889, it sent out a call for stone. Local farmers answered. They loaded wagon after wagon with large fieldstones — the same rocks they were forever prying out of their fields — and hauled them into town. Those rough boulders became the walls of the squat, handsome station that still sits in the middle of Standish on US-23.

The style is Richardsonian Romanesque, a heavy, round-arched look named for the Boston architect Henry Hobson Richardson. It was usually saved for far grander buildings — courthouses, libraries, big-city train stations. To find it shrunk down to a country depot, faced in the gray and brown stones a farmer turned up behind his plow, is part of the charm. The building went up the same year the rails arrived and tied this corner of the state to the wider world.

Passenger trains eventually stopped coming, the way they did almost everywhere. But the depot escaped the wrecking ball. It earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. These days it works as a welcome center, the first thing many travelers see at the south end of the US-23 Heritage Route — the long, two-lane drive that traces Lake Huron’s “Sunrise Coast” north toward the tip of the mitt.

Step inside and the old waiting room is still there, restored, with railroad photos and exhibits about the town. It’s a fine place to stretch your legs and pick up a map before the shoreline run north. Not bad for a building that started as a pile of rocks nobody wanted.