Kent’s Historical Station
Atlantic & Great Western/Erie Railroad Passenger Station, Kent, OH //
Atlantic and Great Western (A&GW) Railroad, the original owners on the station, date back to 1862! The first floor housed the ticket and telegraph office, men's and ladies' waiting rooms, and baggage and express rooms. Big double doors on the track side led to an elegant restaurant, whose manager lived upstairs. The second floor also provided bunk space for the rail workers and clerks. Kent’s station consisted of two platforms which actually extended to the streets adjacent to the building.
The depot opened on June 1st, 1875; replacing a smaller, wood built A&GW shelter. The railroad itself has been serving Kent all the way back to when the area was still called Franklin Mills, in 1853! In 1864, the town changed its name to Kent, celebrating the man to originally chartered rail to the area, Marvin Kent. At that time, before railroad tycoons started buying up everything, Kent was served by the Franklin & Warren Railroad; the predecessor to the A&GW Railroad. Furthermore, when the line later became the larger Atlantic & Great Western. Kent placed a division headquarters in well, Kent. By that time, trains like the Atlantic or Pacific Express, Erie Limited, Phoebe Snow, and Lake Cities were running passenger service thru Kent on their Chicago, IL-Hoboken, NJ route. Local stops coming from Ravenna and Tallmadge also served the Kent station.
Many bankruptcies and mergers later, the station fell under ownership of the Erie Railroad. This boosted passenger ridership as in 1883, Erie ran its first train through Kent on their New York-Chicago route. Through the end of 19th century and first half of the 20th; even after Erie Lackawanna became owners into the 1960s those trains were tootin’ for passengers. Unfortunately not for long though, as due to being citied as “not worth the money being spent” and the uncertain financial status of Erie Lackawanna Railway as a whole. The company started cutting long distance lines and Kent quickly made its way onto the chopping block. The Phoebe Snow was discontinued in November 1966 and not even four years later in January 1970. The final passenger train, a Lake Cities Locomotive No. 826, went thru the station and passenger service hasn’t been back since.
Just miles away a giant interstate interchange is getting subsidized by the federal government and a separated thru-way, 6-lane highway bridge being funded by the state government. They rather spend their time taking out loans for hundreds of millions of dollars and constantly making their citizens unhealthy and unsafe on an inefficient 6-8 lane monstrosity because raising the gas tax is hard and agreement means someones wrong. Last time they raised that ole gas tax thing was in 1993. Wait a minute, wasn’t that thing supposed to help fund federal highway projects? Awww who cares and car go vroom vroom! I digress, that’s a post for another day.
Seriously though, this station is beautiful and adds to the absurd nature of the untapped gold mine of train travel that is Ohio. Absolutely disappointing and kinda ironic Kent, Ohio, a place named for a railroad president, has absolutely no passenger rail connections. The nearest Amtrak stop is about 20 miles away in Alliance.
