The station was located at 137 Main Street in Salamanca, across the track from the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway depot.

[7] On August 2, 1863, 23.85 acres (9.65 ha) was leased to the Erie at a cost of $2,385 (1863 USD) for the "construction, occupancy and maintenance" of its rail activities.

[9] The name of the station is after José de Salamanca, a Spanish banker who was traveling on an inspection trip for the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad in 1862.

The former railroad station in Salamanca was constructed in 1862 about 1 mile (1.6 km) west of the location of the final depot in downtown.

"[4] The wooden depot was quickly outgrown for its design and plans were laid out to replace the structure with a station more suitable for its purpose.

The roof was so bad that the clerks had to protect their tickets with umbrellas and passengers looked for a new place to get shelter.

[15] The new depot contained the offices for the Meadville Division of the Erie Railroad, dispatchers and the Corps of Engineers department aside of its basic utilities of passengers, baggage and mail delivery.

[6] The turntable in the Salamanca yard was replaced once again in 1945 because the S-class locomotives were larger and assigned to the Allegany Division.

The process required two cranes to lift the new table into place, one from Salamanca and another from Port Jervis, New York.

[23] On September 29, 1963, the Erie-Lackawanna Limited was eliminated in favor of extending the famous Phoebe Snow to Dearborn station in Chicago, Illinois.

[25] On October 31, 1965, the train was renamed back to the Lake Cities,[26] and on November 28, 1966, the Phoebe Snow was discontinued.

[27] In June 1969, the Erie Lackawanna petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to discontinue the Lake Cities, which had been producing deficits of at least $500,000.

Reluctantly, the ICC approved by the law discontinuance but pressured the Erie Lackawanna to do the best they could to keep their last intercity passenger train.

[28] The mayor of Salamanca, his wife and the city clerk, along with several officials of Cattaraugus County were on the final train.

[16] In 1971, the Erie Railroad demolished the wooden roundhouse at Salamanca, and the only structures remaining in the yard were the former fueling towers and the turntable.

[11] The depot at Salamanca remained into 1977, being used as offices for the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) and as a diesel maintenance facility.

[13] In the late 1970s, the depot became vacant, and although plans to make it part of a museum and park by 1983 were proposed in 1982, they fell flat.

The Salamanca Police Department noted that the station depot was secure and never been a source of trouble for the patrol team, unlike that of the former Fancher Furniture Company structure on Rochester Street which burned due to arson in 2010.

[31] The next day, Paul Myers, the chief of the Police Department, noted that they would be making arrests soon in connection with the arson.

Chief Myers also noted that day the fire began in a barrel inside the depot and after the investigation, only one person was charged.