Whitefish Depot (Stumptown Historical Society Museum)

Railroad towns don't survive by accident. Whitefish exists because the Great Northern rerouted its main line through here in 1904, and the depot it built in 1928 — Tudor Revival, designed by railroad architect Thomas McMahon — made that fact permanent in brick and timber. One railroader called Whitefish "the most distinctively railroad town on the whole Great Northern system" in 1925. The building still runs: Amtrak's Empire Builder stops here, the Stumptown Historical Society owns the station and runs a local history museum inside, and BNSF leases the upper floors.