History
Nakayamadaira-Onsen Station opened on 1 November 1917 as Nakayamadaira Station (中山平駅) on the Rikuu East Line, in what is now the Naruko-Onsen district of Ōsaki, Miyagi Prefecture; it was renamed to its present "Nakayamadaira-Onsen" form on 22 March 1997. It is operated today by JR East. Ōsaki, in northwestern Miyagi, was formed in 2006 as part of the consolidation that absorbed the former Furukawa City and surrounding municipalities, and its territory is anchored by the Ōsaki-kōdo (Ōsaki Plain) — a major Japanese rice-growing region recognised by the UN FAO as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System, the first such designation in Hokkaido and Tōhoku — and watered by the Eai and Naruse rivers running down from the Ou Mountains.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Notes
The Ōsaki article notes that Naruko Dam — in the same Naruko-Onsen district as this station — was the first 100-metre-class arch concrete dam built entirely by Japanese engineers and is on the Japan Society of Civil Engineers' Selected Civil Engineering Heritage register; the dam's spring "sudare" (curtain) release has become a seasonal landmark, and its impoundment, Lake Arao, is designated as part of Kurikoma Quasi-National Park.