The North Creek Railroad Depot was the terminus for the Adirondack Railroad, which brought people as deep into the eastern and central Adirondacks as possible, by rail. It opened in 1874 and served as a major gateway for the park’s interior for many years. The railway was built by Thomas C. Durant, who owned more than half a million acres in the Adirondacks, and whose son, William West Durant, helped to make them fashionable. During World War II the railway was extended by the federal government from here to Tahawus, for the titanium mine near the headwaters of the Hudson. The mine closed in 1989, and the tracks remain, though their continued use is being debated. The depot is now a local museum, and tells the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous ride out of the wilderness at Mount Marcy to the station, in 1901, where he arrived at dawn to learn that President McKinley had died, and he would become President.