From July 1, 1911 to November 4, 1969, the Union Depot served the city of Joplin. Over the fifty-eight year span, it was at the depot that Joplin saw her fathers, brothers and sons depart and hopefully return from two world wars. It was in the shade of the depot’s awnings that families bid farewell to friends and fellow family members who were departing for the wider world beyond Joplin’s city limits, and it was where they stood in eager anticipation for their return. For a city that foresaw Joplin as a great metropolis positioned at the intersection of the Great American Plains, the Southern Ozarks, and the Southwest, it was one more proud achievement to count among its others. It was one more step down a road to a brighter future.

In the March of 1949, the Kansas City Southern showed off its latest liner, the Southern Belle at the depot. Just over twenty years later, it was the Southern Belle which pulled away, the final train to leave the Joplin Union Depot. The following decades of the Twentieth Century were turbulent for the former pride of Joplin. Only three years after its closing, the Depot’s first chance to become relevant again in the daily life of Joplin was lost when the City Council refused to renovate the building as a home to the Joplin Museum Complex in honor of the city’s 100th birthday. Not long after, the depot was added to the National Register of Historic Places, an honor, but not a safeguard against demolition.