Historic Kyle train depot

For more than half a century, the railroad served as the primary connector between Kyle and the world beyond Hays County, Johnson said. The train depot was the place where those two worlds intersected—a center for community activity and a gateway to Kyle until the ascendancy of highway travel following World War II.

Johnson and a group of fellow volunteers are working to honor Kyle's legacy as a railroad town. By the end of the year, they plan to complete a $900,000 project to restore the city-owned, 96-year-old wooden depot, installing a new foundation and roof and making numerous other improvements that will return it to an authentic example of the original building.

Private donations have largely funded the project. Johnson said she and other members of the depot board plan to raise $104,000 before the third and final stage of restoration can begin this summer.

Once fully restored, the depot is slated to include a visitors center and museum. In addition, the Kyle Area Chamber of Commerce plans to occupy the former freight area in the rear of the depot.

The small wooden building will be a gateway to Kyle once again, Johnson said, the culmination of several years of planning and two years of construction.

"It's going to be the first thing you see when you come to this historic downtown," she said.

Board members are still trying to decide how to address the history of segregation at the depot, Johnson said. The original building offered two waiting areas, one room for white passengers and a separate room for everyone else. Board members are weighing whether to reapply the labels "white" and "colored" to the respective waiting room doors.

"There are a number of people who don't want to put [a racial sign] on there, but we're telling a story, and it's not for us to decide if it's right or wrong," Johnson said. "In order to understand the Jim Crow laws, and how segregation was a part of life, especially during this depot's life, I think as a historian I would like to put it on there."

100 N. Front St., Kyle, www.cityofkyle.com/council/train-depot-board