Pacific Electric Railway Depot
A waiting shelter was built in Bellflower in 1905 for trains running on the Santa Ana Line of the Los Angeles Interurban Railway. Pacific Electric leased the line starting in 1908 and purchased it in 1911. The shelter was replaced with a larger, more accommodating structure in 1927. The January-February 1932 edition of Pacific Electric Magazine reported about a statement made by Bellflower founder F. E. Woodruff in which he expressed his “strong impression that local business men should support the depot better than in the past, and should ship by rail whenever it is at all possible… considering the probability that the local P.E. depot may be abandoned or combined with another nearby depot.” The depot remained open until the last car rolled through on May 24, 1958. It was fully restored using the original plans in 2008 and given a “facelift” in 2020.
Bellflower, Los Angeles County
Images by Andrew Schmidt