The village of Vernon Center (now Durand) was built up around the railroads in the late 1850s. After the rapid expansion of the railroad in the 1870s, the village incorporated itself as Durand in 1887. This was a very busy station as the Grand Trunk Western and Ann Arbor Railroads crossed at grade there. During the early 1900s when the railroad industry was at its peak, 42 passenger trains, 22 mail trains, and 78 freight trains passed through Durand daily. Durand Union Station handled approximately 3,000 passengers per day, making it a prospering hub of the industry.

The Grand Trunk Railway System and the Ann Arbor Railroad built this depot in 1903, at a cost of sixty thousand dollars to serve the thousands of passengers who came to this railroad center.

Durand’s first settlers began farming here in 1837. Its first railroad, the Detroit and Milwaukee, arrived in 1856, thirty-one years before the village of Durand was officially organized.

The depot is the home of the Michigan Railroad History Museum, an educational and entertaining source of Michigan’s rich railroad history. The museum gallery features new exhibits several times per year to pay tribute to the colorful heritage of the railroader and to the contribution of Michigan’s railroads to lumber, mining, agriculture, and industry.