Centennial Station


The Centennial Station is a train station located immediately south of Lacey, Washington, United States that also serves the capital city of Olympia. The station is served by Amtrak's Amtrak Cascades and Coast Starlight.
Local transit connections are provided by Intercity Transit. Bus routes 64 and 94 connect to Lacey and Olympia Transit centers.

History

The original Union Pacific East Olympia station in East Olympia was demolished in the late 1960s. It was used by the pool trains that ran between Seattle and Portland by all three railroads that used the line, Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and Union Pacific. Northern Pacific also had a station at Kyro, approximately northeast of the current station. Amtrak trains during the 1970s and 1980s used a wooden shelter as East Olympia's passenger train station. However, the station site was remote and had no public transport, no lighting and a pot-holed gravel parking lot with a public telephone that rarely worked.
The stop was listed in the October 28, 1990 Coast Starlight timetable. The new Centennial Station was built by the non-profit Amtrak Depot Committee, which began raising funds in 1987 and aimed to open a permanent station in time for the state centennial in 1989. The committee raised $500,000 through government grants, business contributions, individual donations, and the sale of engraved bricks that were later laid in the station plaza. Centennial Station opened to the public on May 1, 1993, following the delayed installation of a sewer system, and was added to the Amtrak system.
It is believed to be the only Amtrak station in the nation and operated entirely by volunteers. The train station was sold to Intercity Transit for $1 in September 1993, while the Amtrak Depot Committee remained the main operators of the facility. The committee also raised $10,000 to install a clocktower in the courtyard, which was dedicated on November 14, 1994, as part of a ceremony for the Talgo trainsets entering service on the Seattle–Portland corridor. The station's parking lot was expanded to 133 stalls as part of an improvement project that was completed in 2001. A second improvement project, completed in 2003, included a rebuilt train platform for accessibility and the installation of an electronic information kiosk.