West Point Depot, Visitors' Center and Museum announced today that the historic meeting venue and tourism resource will close temporarily to prepare for the paving of the parking lot in the front of the restored depot building at 500 Third Ave. on the southern edge of downtown West Point. 

Although West Point was noted for its hospitality from the time visitors first stepped off stage coaches and then passenger trains in the 1800s, the official Visitors' Center at the Depot opened March 1, 2009, and has been host to several hundred visitors representing 30 states and eight countries. Prior to that there was the Depot restoration that covered several years of local grassroots effort.

The restored facility is available for wedding receptions, engagement parties, family and class reunions and business meetings. There is a large banquet room, with a caterer's kitchen, as well as the smaller Museum Room.

"This Depot is a real asset to not only West Point but the Greater Valley Area - a welcome for visitors and a great meeting venue for our residents," said Delores Wooley. "We will reopen at a future point with a newly paved parking lot and staffed, regular operating hours. With the new parking lot, the appeal of the exterior will be in line with the wonderful indoor ambience. We hope that the community will get involved in making this historic site a really enhanced resource for our area."

Today, the Depot's Railroad Room features an extensive scale-model display of CV Railway trains moving through miniature villages and past miniature mills as seen in the 1950s. This is a major attraction for visitors.

There's also an extensive collection of railroad tools, memorabilia from the CV Railway and a standard-gauge railroad set on loan by the Lanier family. 

On other walls, there are massive machinery patterns, hand-carved from solid mahogany and Southern pine, donated by West Point Foundry. There's also a lot of textile memorabilia, recalling the area’s number one industry for more than a century.

The Depot is flanked on the north end by a boxcar replicating the authentic blue and white colors and "Cotton for the Looms of West Point" logo of the short-line CV Railway. These boxcars delivered cotton to West Point Manufacturing Company textile mills just over the line in Alabama. On the Depot's south end is a restored, retrofitted red caboose.

The Depot and Museum serves as a state depository for relics recovered from the Chattahoochee River, which runs behind the Depot, including items from the native Creek Indian tribe and from the Civil War's Battle of Fort Tyler.

History buffs are drawn to a sepia chrome copy of The Battle of Atlanta, which hung behind the Delta Airlines counter at the original Atlanta Airport and now adorns the west wall of the Depot's Museum Room.

"We invite anyone who wants to get involved in not just preserving but continuing to use this historic site in current time to become a part of our Depot Association," Wooley said. For information on the Depot Association, contact her at 706.643.9404.