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Out of the office
By Chris Strunk
Last Updated: June 18, 2015

Valley Center history in Marion Co.

There's a big piece of Valley Center history sitting just south of Hillsboro.

The Valley Center Train Depot, which was picked up and moved to the corner of 140th and Indigo Road (so-called 13-Mile Road) in Marion County in the early 1970s and has been used as a house ever since, has undergone an extensive renovation and its owners are excited about connecting to Valley Center's past.

"I tell everybody about Valley Center, even though I don't know anything about it," said Sue Buchholz, who has lived in the former depot with her husband, DeVerne, since they were married eight years ago. "It's the history we love. I'm so eager to learn more history about Valley Center."

I guess I had forgotten that the old Frisco depot had been moved. It used to be south of the co-op grain elevators on Main Street. I wasn't around then.

Olivia Wilbur was.

She sent me an email the other day about how she and some friends reconnected with the old depot on a daytrip to Hillsboro a couple of weeks ago.

Olivia said they met the depot's owners, who were gracious enough to give them a tour of the building.

Sue Buchholz said she and her husband bought the depot out of bank foreclosure around 2007. It had deteriorated terribly, she said.

"We took everything down — the paneling, the drop ceiling — down to the original wood," said Buchholz, a special education teacher in Marion County. "… We tried to make it as original as possible and still have it as a house. We love antiques and old things."

The depot's original 1,000-square-foot layout had three rooms — a waiting room, a ticket and telegraph office and a freight room. The first set of new owners changed the waiting room to a living room and the ticket office to a kitchen and dining room. The freight room had a bathroom, bedroom and a laundry room.

The second floor includes a half bath and another bedroom.

The Buchholzes stripped the walls of one of the bedrooms to the wood, revealing some interesting history. Visitors to the depot had written on the wall over the years, including one entry from 1888 and another that says Valley Center Kansas Frisco Depot.

DeVerne Buchholz, who is retired, did most of the renovation work, even replacing the building's electricity and plumbing systems.

During the project, the couple opened the roof in the back and found an old whiskey bottle. They weren't sure how old it was.

They also found a "crispy and broken" newspaper in the kitchen wall. It had a train schedule on it.

The depot is on a one-acre corner lot, which was the former home of the one-room Cresswell School building.

"This is a cool historical spot," Sue Buchholz said.

Chris Strunk is publisher of The Ark Valley News. Reach him at 755-0821, news@arkvalleynews.com or on Facebook.




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