Concordia ? A museum that honors and remembers the trains that brought thousands of children from the East Coast to the West will be moving to Concordia.

The board of directors of the Orphan Train Riders Heritage Society of America has decided to move its headquarters to Concordia, where the orphan train made many stops.

The trains brought an estimated 250,000 orphaned or abandoned children from overcrowded Eastern cities, mainly New York, to the West between 1854 and 1930.

One of the children was Arthur Smith, who was called Arthur Field when he was adopted off the train by a Clarinda, Iowa, farm family at the age of 5.

For years, Smith always perked up when he heard the name Field, thinking maybe a relative could tell him something about where he had come from. Then, 14 years ago Smith, who is now 85, received a belated letter from the Children’s Aid Society.

“The letter said I was a foundling, that I had been left at Gimble’s Department Store (in New York),” said Smith, Trenton, N.J. “It said the authorities had come and they gave me the name Arthur Field. They decided I was about a month old.”

Plans are under way to renovate the town’s abandoned depot building, which was donated for the cause and will house a museum and research facilities, said Kim Muff, director of corporate relations for Cloud County Community College.

“Basically, they help people research the family history of anyone they think was an orphan train rider,” Muff said. “It’s really hard to track those people, so they have a lot of records of people that have tried to trace back their family.”

Muff said she would apply for grants to help fund the project, and that a fund-raising campaign would begin soon. She said it was not yet clear how much money would be needed, and there was no target date for the depot project’s completion.

“It’s really sparked a lot of interest in people around here,” Muff said. “There are a lot of family members of those riders when they were brought to places like Belleville, Clyde, Mankato. A lot of the stops were right around here, and lots of those families are still here.”

That’s one reason the orphan train society has decided to move its headquarters from Springdale, Ark., to Concordia, said Norma Poling, president of the society’s board of directors.

“They will have a place to put us, and they have the college there that will be very interested in students learning about history and researching it,” said Poling, Scottsdale, Ariz., whose mother was an orphan train rider.

She said Springdale officials and the community did not support the museum. The society, which was established 17 years ago, was centered in Springdale because its founder was from there, Poling said.

“We needed to go someplace where someone would appreciate us,” Muff said. “So many of the orphans went to Kansas and Missouri and all the states around there. They just have more of an interest in it. They wanted it so much, I think they’ll have an all-out effort.”