Harrisburg grew from its earliest years due to its strategic location as a gateway to western expansion and an important inland center of transportation and trade and thus a major target of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Harrisburg's present railroad station dates to 1887 and was expanded in 1902 and 1910. Built by the Pennsylvania Railroad, this building replaced on the same site the 1857 station which was viewed by President Abraham Lincoln when arriving at Harrisburg on route to his 1861 inauguration in Washington DC. It was also the stop of Lincoln's funeral train in 1865 which made a multi-city procession to Springfield, Illinois. Queen Anne in architectural style and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the present Old Pennsylvania Railroad Station is particularly distinguished by its lofty train sheds, a rarity in the United States, and by the thorough restoration that presents to current and future rail passengers a fitting ???welcome mat??? to the city which lies beyond.

Panorama by Jeb Stuart / Jackson Lattimore