The former Tri-State Motor Coach Station on Walnut Street is one of seven Mississippi buildings named to the National Register of Historic Places, according to information from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

The National Register of Historic Places was established by Congress in 1966 to help identify and protect historically significant properties.

“We are delighted that this important Vicksburg landmark has been recognized as significant historic building to the nation through the National Register process,” said Nancy Bell, executive director of the Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation.

The Tri-State Motor Coach Station is locally significant in the area of transportation, she said, because it is the first, and until 2004, the only building constructed as a bus depot in Vicksburg.

The depot was built in 1941 by the Tri-State Transit Co. of Louisiana, which began bus service in 1922 in Shreveport, Louisiana, operating three routes from Shreveport to Mansfield, Louisiana, Marshall, Texas, and Oil City, Louisiana.

Two years later the company expanded to Monroe, Louisiana, forming one of the longest bus operations in the South, and by 1940, operated over 4,300 highway miles in nine states including Mississippi.  The total annual mileage was over 9 million miles, and the buses carried over three million passengers a year.

Before the station was built on Walnut Street, Tri-State used a building that was a half block north, at 800 South St. It shared the new building with Delta Transportation Company, headquartered in Greenville, and Cox Motor Coaches, a Vicksburg company.

The Tri-State Station was used as a bus station until 2004, when Greyhound, who then operated out of the station, built a new one in a more accessible location just off of Halls Ferry Road and Interstate 20.  The old station was rehabilitated into a coffee shop and is now apartments.

Bell called the apartments “a great use of the building. It’s just a great little building.”