Upgrading Aptucxet: Restoration of Grover Cleveland’s train station continues

The Bourne Historical Society project to move and upgrade the personal Gray Gables train station of President Grover Cleveland is making progress this winter.

Project manager Ted Ellis was planning to backfill the station foundation and proceed with roof repairs this week. The presidential rail station has been moved from next to the canal to the Aptucxet Trading Post entrance off Shore Road.

Society president Galon “Skip” Barlow and Ellis have been scouring rail yards, looking for a caboose or old train car – of the Keith Car Works vintage – to move next to the train station. “It would be a static display,” Barlow said.

Barlow also said plans also include re-painting the station in its original colors with a red roof. He said the society is also trying to gather artifacts to add to the site, such as vintage light ports and a telegraph machine.

“The telegraph was Cleveland’s lifeblood to Washington,” Barlow said. “It would make a great addition to the site.”

There are other plans unfolding as well. The society plans to invite President Cleveland’s grandson to the opening of the restored station.

And Barlow said he also plans to ask selectmen to add a sign to the highways entering Bourne, showing the late president in silhouette - in his fishing outfit – and announcing “The Summer Home of Grover Cleveland.”

Barlow says the plans are ambitious. But he hopes the station can open about the same time as the trading post; if not then, perhaps in June.

All this is part of a systematic sprucing-up effort at Aptucxet. The goal is to be ready for the 2014 canal centennial celebration, which undoubtedly attract people to the trading post replica next to the canal.

Art studio

There are also new plans for the Joe Jefferson Windmill and Gift Shop across the driveway from the rail station. They involve moving the gift shop to the neighboring information booth transferred to the Aptucxet site from the North Sagamore rotary a few winters ago.

Then the windmill would be restored as an art studio. Barlow said Joe Jefferson, the celebrated 19th century stage actor with a national reputation used the windmill as a studio. Jefferson and Cleveland were fishing buddies.

Barlow said inmate crews supplied by the Barnstable County Sheriff’s Department have been working and clearing brush and dead limbs at Aptucxet. The trading post caretaker’s home as well has been refurbished.

“I think that overall all this is real positive thing for Aptucxet,” Barlow said. “The place will be more attractive. There will be more visitors. It will bring more people to the site, especially with the canal celebration. Hopefully groups would use the art studio; perhaps The Painted Ladies.”

Railroad stop

Thought has also been given the longer-term prospects of making Aptucxet a stop on the Cape Cod Central Railroad trips from Hyannis to Buzzards Bay.

The vegetation next to the rail bed along Aptucxet Road has been cleared. Rail excursion passengers in the future would be able to visit the trading post complex while the train proceeds across the canal to Buzzards Bay for the turnaround and then board on the return trip to Hyannis.

Barlow said work to date at the Aptucxet entrance has not pivoted on requests for Community Preservation Act funding. He said the society held fundraisers instead to help pay project costs.

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Upgrading Aptucxet: Restoration of Grover Cleveland’s train station continues