History
Mukawa Station opened on 1913-10-01 as an intermediate stop on the privately operated Tomakomai Light Railway between Tomakomai and Saruta (later Tomikawa). The railway was nationalised on 1927-08-01 and renamed the Hidaka Line under the Ministry of Railways, becoming the Hidaka Main Line in 1943 when a connecting line opened to the Tomiuchi Line via Toyoshiro. Freight handling ceased in 1977 and the station became unstaffed and simple-commission operated in the 1980s; control passed to JR Hokkaido on 1987-04-01. Following heavy-wave damage on 2015-01-08 between Atsuga and Ōkaribe, services on the Mukawa - Samani section were indefinitely suspended, and that 116-kilometre section was formally abolished on 2021-04-01 — making Mukawa the new terminus of the Hidaka Main Line.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The pre-war Mukawa River was used to float lumber to a yard near the station, but the practice ended in 1929 when log-handling shifted upstream to Hobetsu, eliminating freight loading at Mukawa.