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(Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, A Division of the Department of Arkansas Heritage, Mason Toms, photographer)
One of the icons of Fayetteville’s main commercial thoroughfare, Dickson Street, is the small, sand-colored, Mission Revival train depot with a false adobe facade and “wooden” (actually stucco-covered brick) vigas studding the top of the entrance portico. This is the third station on this site. The original 1882 depot for the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (the Frisco) was replaced with a 1897 brick depot, which burned in the 1920s and was replaced by this building, with a waiting room doubled in size. The design followed the popular Mission Revival pattern for railway stations in the 1920s to encourage travel to the American Southwest. In the station’s heyday, six trains a day stopped here. The two square columns and two pilasters of the entrance portico rest on bases of exposed red brick and red brick circles the entire depot for its base. Windows are rectangular, the station’s short sides feature Mission-shaped parapets, and the roof has red tiles. Passenger service ceased in 1965, and the depot was sold. In 2006, it was renovated for a coffee shop, ice cream parlor, sports bar, and offices.