The depot was completed in 1924 (construction having begun in 1923), replacing an earlier structure at the Kelso station on what was then the Union Pacific's Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad. The Spanish Colonial Revival style — tile roofs, stucco walls, arched openings — was a deliberate aesthetic choice, connecting the desert railroad stop to the California mission tradition. The same style appeared at resort hotels and civic buildings throughout Southern California in the 1920s; applied to a working railroad depot in the Mojave, it created something both incongruous and distinctive.

The building served practical as well as architectural purposes. The depot housed the station agent, provided waiting areas for passengers, and anchored the commercial activity that made Kelso a functioning community rather than just a railroad siding. The Beanery, the restaurant that fed crews around the clock, operated in the building's ground floor. The depot was where Kelso's residents came for news, packages, and the basic functions that the railroad connection provided.

The Union Pacific's Kelso Depot was, in its heyday, competing against the Santa Fe Railway's more famous Harvey Houses — the chain of restaurants and hotels that Harvey Company operated along the Santa Fe's transcontinental line. The Casa del Desierto in Barstow was the most prominent Harvey House in the region, a larger and more elaborate facility serving Santa Fe passengers.

Kelso's depot operated on smaller scale, serving working railroad people rather than transcontinental tourists. The Beanery fed locomotive crews, freight handlers, and the mining workers who used the railroad to reach the surrounding desert operations. The competition was less about prestige than about utility — which railroad company was keeping which workers fed and rested in the desert.

Union Pacific's 1985 demolition proposal triggered a preservation response that drew in the National Park Service, California state government, and preservation advocates who recognized that the depot was irreplaceable. The building had been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was part of a historic district declared in 2000. Demolishing it would have required navigating regulations that, combined with public opposition, made the project more trouble than the railroad's investment justified.

Union Pacific transferred the building to the Bureau of Land Management in 1992. The transfer moved the depot from railroad ownership to federal ownership, which meant that any future use would be determined by public interest rather than operational economics. The NPS subsequently took on the restoration and operation of the building as part of Mojave National Preserve, which was established two years later.

The Kelso Depot opened as the Mojave National Preserve visitor center in 2005, following years of restoration. The same building that Union Pacific had proposed to demolish two decades earlier became the primary public facility for 1.6 million acres of protected Mojave Desert — a reversal that the preservationists who fought the demolition could reasonably regard as complete.

In September 2025, the visitor center closed again for renovation, with a reopening expected in 2026. The renovation addresses structural and infrastructure issues that accumulated over the depot's century of existence. The date palms planted around the building during its operational years — which survived the decades of intermittent closure and desert conditions — continue to provide shade outside the building while the interior work proceeds. The Beanery's kitchen, where railroad crews ate at all hours a century ago, will eventually reopen to welcome desert hikers who have made the same Mojave crossing under very different circumstances.