History
Minenobu Station opened on 5 July 1891 as a station of the private Hokkaido Colliery and Railway, originally written 峯延 before adopting its current spelling around 1900. It was historically the closest railhead to both the Sorachi Prison Camp at Ichikishiri (now Mikasa) and the Kabato Prison Camp at Tsukigata. With the nationalisation of the Hokkaido Colliery and Railway lines on 1 October 1906, the station passed to the state Railway Bureau. A short-lived Minenobu Colliery operated a horse-drawn tramway to a loading siding near the station from about 1904 until the colliery's closure in 1907. Freight services ended on 2 October 1978 and luggage handling on 1 February 1984, after which the station was made unstaffed under simple-trust operation. Ownership transferred to JR Hokkaido at the 1 April 1987 privatisation, and Kitaca service began on 16 March 2024.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.