History
Uchita Station opened on 24 August 1900 on the privately built Kiwa Railway when the line was extended from Funado to the Kokawa temporary stop, in what is now Kinokawa, Wakayama Prefecture. The Kansai Railway acquired the line on 27 August 1904 and the network was nationalised on 1 October 1907, becoming part of the Wakayama Line under the 1909 line-naming reforms. Freight handling ceased on 1 April 1978 and parcel service on 20 October 1984. JNR's 1 April 1987 privatisation passed the station to JR West, a southern entrance was added in 2011 (formalised in 2019), ICOCA service began on 14 March 2020, and the station became fully unstaffed on 1 June 2020.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Local tradition attributes the place name Uchita to fields once enclosed by the Kinokawa and Karasugo rivers — originally written 内田 ("inner fields"), the characters shifted over time to 打田, and when the 1956 town merger needed a name it chose Uchita because the station had already made the spelling familiar for over half a century.