By Steve Sears

The corner of Evans Place and Jackson Avenue in Pompton Plains is busy. Cars turn the corner often, a shopping center the main destination.

Much like this area now, except with the absence of motor vehicles, activity bustled as well back in 1872. In its heyday the railroad station was the center of town as well. “The railroad really fostered growth,” explains W. Jay Wanczyk, Executive Board Member and Co-Founder Pequannock Township Historical Society, and Chair of the Pequannock Township Historic District Commission. 

A stroll behind the Pequannock Township Museum on Evans Road, which is housed inside the 145-year-old Pompton Plains Railroad Station building, yields the sight of ancient wooden railroad tracks, which are soon to be tarred over and walking and biking path installed.

“It’s a great town. It’s been a wonderful town to grow up in,” Wanczyk states of Pequannock Township. “And it’s a joy to see; it’s a touchstone to the past. In my sophomore year in high school (1966), the railroads ended their passenger service here, the commuter service.” The first commuter train was on January 1, 1872, and the current building at the site was not the original for the Greenwood Lake Division Line. The current building was built in 1877. “When passenger services ended and the building was proposed for demolition, a group called the Pequannock Township Museum & Cultural Association, which morphed into the Society for the Arts, paid $1,000 for the station. That was just for the station building. They still had to pay rent for the land.”

Over time, due to the fact the group wanted to have events at the location, two partition walls were ripped out, but one was recreated. “This was the agent’s office, this was the waiting room, and that was the baggage room,” Wanczyk says, looking around the small building. Two original benches from the building were placed outside but were destroyed by vandals, and the original ticket window has disappeared. “These things disappear because people are caring for them and then they die off, and who knows what happens,” he says. “But that’s the problem, a lot of artifacts have been lost over the years.” The wooden floor may be original to the building. “As far as some of this wood here which you can tell has been replaced, all of the millwork is original,” Wanczyk adds. The color of the room is loyal to the stations original shade, buff colored with brown trim.  

A replica “Wells Fargo Co & Express” sign adorns the building outside, but the original is inside the station, high on a shelf. Wells Fargo, in addition to their banking business, did package and delivery services from the station in the late 1800s, but that venture was abandoned after World War I. “You could bring a package here in 1880 and mail it to your cousin in San Francisco,” Wanczyk says. “You filled out the labels, shipped it on railroad car, and two weeks later, it would show up in San Francisco.” During restoration work, since there was no basement underneath the station, digging was done to create a tiny crawl space for air movement, and the original Wells Fargo sign was found beneath the building among a bunch of old bottles. Wanczyk grabs a 1914 photo of the building with that sign hanging on it. “It’s in remarkably good shape,” he says, “although the rust is eating away at the edges.”

The building has served as an insurance office and a consignment shop, but sitting inside the location, with photos of the past and other memorabilia filling the room, it appears the tiny station was dropped from the sky, and all it contains is meant to show visitors that the past is within striking distance, and is still very important today. The station was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 5, 2008. 

“The key thing is, this building has had a charmed life.”