Merced station is an intercity rail station located in

Merced, California Merced (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Mercy") is a city in, and the county seat of, Merced County, California, Merced County, California, United States, in the San Joaquin Valley. As of the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 86,333, up ...

, United States. The station is served by seven daily round trips of the ''

San Joaquins The ''San Joaquins'' is a passenger train service operated by Amtrak in California's San Joaquin Valley. Six daily round trips run between its southern terminus at Bakersfield and Stockton, with onward service to Sacramento (all round trips) an ...

'' and is a major transfer point for

Yosemite Area Regional Transportation System The Yosemite Area Regional Transportation System, also known as YARTS, is a public transit bus line based in Merced, California. YARTS provides scheduled service into popular locations within Merced, Mariposa, Mono, Tuolumne, Madera, and Fresn ...

(YARTS) buses serving

Yosemite National Park Yosemite National Park ( ) is an American national park in California, surrounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers an ar ...

. Merced station has a single

side platform A side platform (also known as a marginal platform or a single-face platform) is a platform positioned to the side of one or more railway tracks or guideways at a railway station, tram stop, or transitway. A station having dual side platforms ...

adjacent to the western track of the

BNSF Railway BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that ...

Stockton Subdivision The Stockton Subdivision is a railroad line in the U.S. state of California owned by the BNSF Railway. It runs from the Port of Richmond, where trains interchange with the Richmond Pacific Railroad, to Fresno where the railway continues south as t ...

. The

Southern Pacific Railroad The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials- SP) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the ...

(SP) opened through Merced in 1872, followed by the

San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railroad The San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railroad was a California rail line between Stockton and Bakersfield constructed in the late 1890s and very shortly thereafter purchased by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad and became their Val ...

in 1896. The

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison, Kansas, Atchison and Top ...

(AT&SF) purchased the latter railroad in 1899 and erected a larger station in 1917. Service on both the SP and AT&SF ended in 1971; Amtrak ''San Joaquin'' service began on the AT&SF line in 1974. In 2000, the city replaced the 1917-built station with a modern facility of similar design.

History

The first railroad through Merced was the

Central Pacific Railroad The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a rail company chartered by Pacific Railroad Acts, U.S. Congress in 1862 to build a railroad eastwards from Sacramento, California, to complete the western part of the "First transcontinental railroad" in N ...

, a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP), which reached the village on January 15, 1872. Charles Henry Huffman, who was the SP's agent for land acquisition, founded Merced and moved there when the railroad opened. The original village was along Bear Creek, but the town center quickly became the SP station. A branch to Oakdale (later extended to Stockton) was completed in 1891. The SP later built a new station off 16th Street at N Street. Merced station, November 20, 1979

The San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railroad opened through Merced in 1896. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF) – the SP's main rival – purchased the line in 1899, providing it a parallel competing mainline through the Central Valley. In 1907, the

Yosemite Valley Railroad The Yosemite Valley Railroad (YVRR) was a short-line railroad operating from 1907 to 1945 in the state of California, mostly following the Merced River from Merced to Yosemite National Park, carrying a mixture of passenger and freight traffic. ...

(YVRR) began service from Merced to El Portal – the gateway to Yosemite National Park. The YVRR connected with both mainlines in Merced; its shops were northwest of downtown, while its station was adjacent to the AT&SF station. In 1917, the AT&SF built a new station at 24th Street and J Street. Unlike most of the railroad's stations in California, which were in the

Mission Revival The Mission Revival style was part of an architectural movement, beginning in the late 19th century, for the revival and reinterpretation of American colonial styles. Mission Revival drew inspiration from the late 18th and early 19th century ...

style, the Merced station was also influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement. The lower part of the walls was bare brick, while the rest was coated in

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

to approximate the look of

adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

. The eaves of the gabled roof provided shelter for passengers, and the northwest end of the station was open with broad arches. Passenger service on both branch lines ended in the 1940s. Merced remained an important stop on the two mainlines, serving named trains including the ''

San Francisco Chief The ''San Francisco Chief'' was a streamlined passenger train on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway ("Santa Fe") between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. It ran from 1954 until 1971. The ''San Francisco Chief'' was the last new str ...

'' and ''

Golden Gate The Golden Gate is a strait on the west coast of North America that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. It is defined by the headlands of the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula, and, since 1937, has been spanned by th ...

'' on the AT&SF, and the ''

San Joaquin Daylight The ''San Joaquin Daylight'' was a Southern Pacific passenger train (train numbers 51 and 52) inaugurated between Los Angeles and San Francisco's Oakland Pier by way of the San Joaquin Valley and Tehachapi Pass on July 4, 1941. Travel times were ...

'' and ''

Sacramento Daylight The ''Sacramento Daylight'' was a named passenger train operated by the Southern Pacific Railroad, part of the family of "Daylights" which included the ''San Joaquin Daylight'', ''Shasta Daylight'', ''Coast Daylight'', and '' Sunbeam''. It carrie ...

'' on the SP. On May 1, 1971,

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

took over intercity passenger service in the United States from the private railroads. Amtrak chose to run its San Francisco–Los Angeles service over the Coast Line rather than the Central Valley, and passenger service to Merced ended. Amtrak began the Oakland–Bakersfield ''

'' on March 5, 1974. The ''San Joaquin'' was controversially routed over the AT&SF rather than the SP (which ran through more major cities); the AT&SF station in Merced was used by Amtrak. The SP station was renovated in the 1990s to serve as the city bus terminal. By the end of the century, the 1917-built station was in poor shape. In 2000, it was replaced by a new station on the same site. The new station, which was funded by

Caltrans The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is an Executive (government), executive department of the U.S. state of California. The department is part of the Government of California#State agencies, cabinet-level California State Tran ...

, copies the basic design of the former station but with modern improvements. It includes improved facilities for Yosemite Area Regional Transportation System (YARTS) bus service to Yosemite (which serves as an

Amtrak Thruway Amtrak Thruway is a system of through-ticketed transportation services to connect passengers with areas not served by Amtrak trains. In most cases these are dedicated motorcoach routes, but can also be non-dedicated intercity bus services, transit ...

route). The planned Merced station of the

California High-Speed Rail California High-Speed Rail (also known as CAHSR or CHSR) is a publicly funded high-speed rail system currently under construction in California in the United States. Planning for the project began in 1996, when the California Legislature and Gover ...

system would be built along the ex-SP alignment at R and 15th.

References

External links

*USA RailGuide
Merced, CA (MCD)
{{Amtrak California stations Railway stations in Merced County, California Former Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway stations in California Buildings and structures in Merced, California Railway stations in the United States opened in 1917 Amtrak stations in California Merced station