Moundsville, WV: Lost/B&O Depot

(Satellite, west of the mainline and between 7th and 8th Streets.)

Chris Miller posted
B&O Depot in Moundsville, WV... about 7 miles below Benwood. Moundsville is where my mom grew up.
Jim Kelling: It's long gone, but see it in the 1960s film "Fools Parade" with Jimmy Stewart, Strother Martin, Anne Baxter, and a young Kurt Russell. Many good scenes around the depot, renamed in the film.

Eric Anderson posted six phtos with the comment: "Few more photos of the B&O Union Station located in Moundsville, WV."

Carl King: There was a flood? Did it destroy the station? When was it?

Eric Anderson: Carl King If I had to venture a guess, the picture of that flood could have been in 1936, when Moundsville and the upper Ohio Valley was hit with a historic flood. However, the station sat in close proximity to the Ohio River and probably could have been flooded easily with any seasonal flood. Given the age of that particular photo and the fact that the station was finally tore down sometime in the 1970's or 80's, proves that it did survive that flood and probably many others.

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When I wrote these notes, I thought the route to the left in the above photo that has the train was a branch line. Fortunately, just a few hours later I studied the Board Tree Tunnel and learned that the curving route was the original B&O mainline built in the 1850s. So I was able to remove the word "branch" from these notes before I published them. The route used today between Grafton and Wheeling had not yet been built by 1934. There is more information about these old and new routes in the tunnel notes.

This topo map accurately marks the location of the depot.

1972 Businessburg and 1960 Moundsville Quads @ 24,000

I included what appears to be a freight house down by 10th Street and the route that used to go up the Grave Creek Valley. The topo map did not mark the freight house.

Sep 15, 1957 @ 31,000; AR1VRD000030010

There is still a remnant of the foundation for the freight house.

Satellite