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Northern Pacific Railway

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Railway transport

                           Northern Pacific Railway
                                    logo
    Reporting marks   NP
         Locale       Ashland, Wisconsin and St. Paul, Minnesota to Seattle,
                      Washington, Tacoma, Washington and Portland, Oregon
   Dates of operation 1864 – 1970
     Successor line   Burlington Northern
      Track gauge     4  ft 8½  in (1435  mm) ( standard gauge)
      Headquarters    Saint Paul, Minnesota

   The Northern Pacific Railway ( AAR reporting mark NP) was a railway
   that operated in the north-central region of the United States. The
   railroad served a large area, including extensive trackage in the
   states of Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington
   and Wisconsin. The company was headquartered first in Brainerd,
   Minnesota, then in St. Paul, Minnesota.

History

   The Northern Pacific was chartered on July 2, 1864 as the first
   northern transcontinental railroad. It was granted some
   47,000,000 acres (190,000 km²) of land in exchange for building rail
   transportation to an undeveloped territory. Josiah Perham (for whom
   Perham, Minnesota is named) was elected its first president on December
   7, 1864.

   For the next six years, backers of the road struggled to find
   financing. Though John Gregory Smith succeeded Perham as president on
   January 5, 1866, groundbreaking did not take place until February 15,
   1870, at Thompson Junction, Minnesota, 25 miles (40 km) west of Duluth,
   Minnesota. The backing and promotions of famed Civil War financier Jay
   Cooke in the summer of 1870 brought the first real momentum to the
   company.

   Over the course of 1870, the Northern Pacific pushed westward from
   Minnesota into present-day North Dakota. It also began reaching from
   Kalama, Washington Territory, on the Columbia River outside of
   Portland, Oregon, towards Puget Sound. Four small construction engines
   were purchased, the Minnetonka, Itaska, Ottertail and St. Cloud, the
   first of which was shipped to Kalama by ship around Cape Horn. In
   Minnesota, the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad completed
   construction of its 155 mile (250 km) line stretching from St. Paul,
   Minnesota, to Lake Superior at Duluth in 1870. It was leased to the
   Northern Pacific the following year, and was eventually absorbed by the
   Northern Pacific.

   In 1871, Northern Pacific completed some 230 miles (370 km) of railroad
   on the east end of its system, reaching out to Moorhead, Minnesota, on
   the North Dakota border. In the west, the track extended 25 miles north
   from Kalama. Surveys were carried out in North Dakota protected by 600
   troops from General Winfield Scott Hancock. Headquarters and shops were
   established in Brainerd, Minnesota, a town named for the President John
   Gregory Smith's wife Anna Elizabeth Brainerd.

   In 1872, the company put down 164 miles (264 km) of main line across
   North Dakota, with an additional 45 miles (72 km) in Washington. On
   November 1, General George Washington Cass became the third president
   of the company. Cass had been a vice-president and director of the
   Pennsylvania Railroad, and would lead the Northern Pacific through some
   of its most difficult times. Attacks on survey parties and construction
   crews building into Native American homelands in North Dakota became so
   prevalent the company appealed for Army protection from President
   Ulysses S. Grant. In 1872 the Northern Pacific also opened colonization
   offices in Europe, seeking to attract settlers to the sparsely
   populated and undeveloped region it served. Survey parties accompanied
   by Federal troops, railroad construction, permanent settlement and
   development, along with the discovery of gold in nearby South Dakota,
   all served as a backdrop leading up to the Battle of the Little Bighorn
   and the defeat of General George Armstrong Custer in 1876.

   In 1873, Northern Pacific made impressive strides before a terrible
   stumble. Rails from the east reached the Missouri River on June 4.
   After several years of study, Tacoma, Washington, was selected as the
   road's western terminus on July 14. However, for the past three years
   the financial house of Jay Cooke and Company had been throwing money
   into the construction of the Northern Pacific. Like many western
   transcontinentals, the staggering costs of building a railroad into a
   vast wilderness were drastically underestimated. For a variety of
   reasons, led by the costs of constructing the railroad itself, Cooke
   and Company closed its doors on September 18. Soon, the Panic of 1873
   engulfed the United States, ushering in a severe recession which would
   drag on for several years. The Northern Pacific, however, survived
   bankruptcy that year, due to austerity measures put in place by
   President Cass. In fact, working with last-minute loans from Director
   John Commiger Ainsworth of Portland, the Northern Pacific completed the
   line from Kalama to Tacoma, 110 miles (177 km), before the end of the
   year. On December 16, the first steam train arrived in Tacoma. The year
   of 1874, however, found the company moribund.

   Northern Pacific slipped into its first bankruptcy on June 30, 1875.
   Cass resigned to become receiver of the company, and Charles Barstow
   Wright became fourth president of the company. Frederick H. Billings,
   namesake of Billings, Montana, formulated a reorganization plan which
   was put into effect. This same year George Custer was assigned to Fort
   Rice, Dakota Territory, and charged with protecting railroad survey and
   construction crews.

   In 1877, construction resumed in a small way. Northern Pacific pushed a
   branch line north from Tacoma to Puyallup, Washington, where it turned
   east to reach coal fields around Wilkeson, Washington. Much of the coal
   was destined for export through Tacoma to San Francisco, California,
   where it would be thrown into the fireboxes of Central Pacific Railroad
   steam engines. This small amount of construction was one of the largest
   projects the company would undertake in the years between 1874 and
   1880. That same year the company built a large shop complex at South
   Tacoma, Washington. For many years the shops at Brainerd and South
   Tacoma would carry out heavy repairs and build equipment for the
   railroad.

   On May 24, 1879, Vermont lawyer Fredrick Billings became the president
   of the company. Billings tenure would be short but ferocious.
   Reorganization, bond sales, and improvement in the U.S. economy allowed
   Northern Pacific to strike out across the Missouri River by letting a
   contract to build 100 miles (160 km) of railroad west of the river. The
   railroad's new-found strength, however, would be seen as a threat in
   certain quarters.
   Oregon and Transcontinental stock owned by Henry Villard.
   Enlarge
   Oregon and Transcontinental stock owned by Henry Villard.

   Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard had been born in Bavaria in 1835,
   emigrating to America in 1853, at the ripe old age of 18. Settling in
   Illinois, the well-educated Hilgard became a journalist and editor,
   covering the Lincoln-Douglas debates, then the American Civil War for
   the larger New York papers, changing his name to Henry Villard along
   the way. He went back to his native Germany in 1871, where he came in
   contact with European financial interests speculating in American
   railroads. When he returned to the United States after the Panic of
   1873, he was the representative of these concerns. In the few short
   years prior to 1880, Villard intervened on the behalf of these
   interests in several transportation systems in Oregon. Through
   Villard's work, most of these lines wound up in the hands of the
   European creditors' holding company, the Oregon and Transcontinental.
   Of the lines held by the Oregon and Transcontinental, the most
   important was the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, a line running
   east from Portland along the south bank of the Columbia River to a
   connection with the Union Pacific Railroad's Oregon Short Line at the
   confluence of the Columbia River and the Snake River near Wallula,
   Washington. Within a decade of his return, Henry Villard became the
   head of a transportation empire in the Pacific Northwest that had but
   one real competitor, the ever-expanding Northern Pacific. Northern
   Pacific's completion threatened the holdings of Villard in the
   Northwest, and especially in Portland. Portland would become a
   second-class city if the Puget Sound ports at Tacoma and Seattle,
   Washington were connected to the East by rail. Villard, who had been
   building a monopoly of river and rail transportation in Oregon for
   several years, now launched a daring raid. Using his European
   connections and a reputation for having "bested" Jay Gould in a battle
   for control of the Kansas Pacific years before, Villard solicited — and
   raised — $8 million from his associates. This was his famous "Blind
   Pool," Villard's associates were not told what the money would be used
   for. In this case, the funds were used to purchase control of the
   Northern Pacific. Depite a tough fight, Billings and his backers were
   forced to capitulate; he resigned the presidency June 9. Ashabel H.
   Barney was brought in as an interim caretaker of the railroad from June
   19 to September 15, when Villard was finally elected president by the
   stockholders. For the next two years, Villard and the Northern Pacific
   rode the whirlwind.

   In 1882, 360 miles (580 km) of main line and 368 miles (592 km) of
   branch line were completed, bringing totals to 1,347 miles (2,168 km)
   and 731 miles (1,176 km), respectively. On October 10, 1882, the line
   from Wadena, Minnesota, to Fergus Falls, Minnesota, opened for service.
   The Missouri River was bridged with a million-dollar span on October
   21, 1882. The Missouri had been handled by a ferry service most of the
   year. During winters, when ice was thick enough, the rails were laid
   across the river itself. General Herman Haupt another veteran of the
   Civil War and the Pennsylvania Railroad, set up the Northern Pacific
   Beneficial Association on August 19. A forerunner of the modern health
   maintenance organization, the NPBA ultimately established a series of
   four hospitals across the system in St. Paul, Minnesota, Glendive,
   Montana, Missoula, Montana, and Tacoma, Washington, to care for
   employees, retirees, and their families.

   Events reached their climax in 1883. On January 15 the first train
   reached Livingston, Montana at the eastern foot of Bozeman Pass.
   Livingston, like Brainerd and South Tacoma before it, would grow to
   encompass a large backshop handling heavy repairs for the railroad. It
   would also mark the east-west dividing line on the Northern Pacific
   system. Villard pushed hard for the completion of the Northern Pacific
   in 1883. During Villard's presidency, crews were averaging a mile and
   half (2.4 km) of track laying each day. Finally, in September, the line
   neared completion. To celebrate, Villard chartered four trains to carry
   visitors from the East to Gold Creek in central Montana. No expense was
   spared and the list of dignitaries included Frederick Billings, Ulysses
   S. Grant, and Villard's in-laws, the family of abolitionist William
   Lloyd Garrison. On September 8, the Gold Spike was driven at Gold
   Creek.

   However, Villard's fall turned out to be even swifter than his
   ascendancy. Like Jay Cooke, the enormous costs of contructing the
   railroad now consumed him. Wall Street bears attacked the stock shortly
   after the Gold Spike, after the realization that the Northern Pacific
   was a very long road with very little business. Villard himself is said
   to have suffered a nervous breakdown in the days following the Gold
   Spike, and he left the presidency of the Northern Pacific and the
   United States to convalesce in Germany in January, 1884. Again, the
   presidency of the Northern Pacific was handed to a professional
   railroader, Robert Harris, former head of the Chicago, Burlington and
   Quincy Railroad. For the next four years, until the return of the
   Villard clique, Harris worked at improving the property and breaking
   away from its tangled relationship with the Oregon Railway and
   Navigation Company.

   Throughout the middle 1880s, the Northern Pacific pushed to reach Puget
   Sound directly, rather than a roundabout route following the Columbia
   River. Surveys of the Cascade Mountains, carried out intermittently
   since the 1870s, now began anew. Virgil Gay Bogue, a veteran civil
   engineer, was sent to explore the Cascades again. On March 19, 1881, he
   discovered Stampede Pass. In 1884, after the departure of Villard, the
   Northern Pacific began building toward Stampede Pass from Wallula in
   the east and the area of Wilkeson in the west. By the end of the year,
   rails had reached Yakima, Washington in the east. A 77 mile (124 km)
   gap remained in 1886. In January of that year, Nelson Bennett was given
   a contract to construct a 9,850 foot (3,002 metre) tunnel under
   Stampede Pass. The contract specified a short amount of time for
   completion, and a large penalty if the deadline were missed. While
   crews worked on the tunnel, the railroad built a temporary switchback
   route across the pass. With numerous timber trestles and grades which
   approached six percent, the temporary line required the two largest
   locomotives in the world (at that time) to handle a tiny five-car
   train. On May 3, 1888 crews holed through the tunnel, and on May 27 the
   first train direct to Puget Sound passed through.

   Despite this success, the Northern Pacific, like many U.S. roads, was
   living on borrowed time. From 1887 until 1893 Henry Villard returned to
   the board of directors. Though offered the presidency, he refused.
   However, an associate of Villard dating back to his time on the Kansas
   Pacific, Thomas Fletcher Oakes, assumed the presidency on September 20,
   1888. In an effort to garner business, the Villard regime pursued an
   aggressive policy of branch line expansion. In addition, the Northern
   Pacific experienced the first competition in the form of James Jerome
   Hill and his Great Northern Railway. The Great Northern, like the
   Northern Pacific before it, was pushing west from the Twin Cities
   towards Puget Sound, and would be completed in 1893. To combat the
   Great Northern, in a few instances Villard built branch line mileage
   simply to occupy a territory, regardless of whether the territory
   offered the railroad any business. Mismanagement, sparse traffic, and
   the Panic of 1893 sounded the death knell for the Northern Pacific and
   Villard's interest in railroading. The company slipped into its second
   bankruptcy on October 20, 1893. Oakes was named receiver and Brayton C.
   Ives, a former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange became
   president. For the next three years, the Villard-Oakes interests and
   the Ives interest feuded for control of the Northern Pacific. Oakes was
   eventually forced out as receiver, but not before three separate courts
   were claiming jurisdiction over the Northern Pacific's bankruptcy.
   Things came to a head in 1896, when first Edward D. Adams was appointed
   president, then less than two months later, Edwin Winter. Ultimately,
   the task of straightening out the muddle of the Northern Pacific was
   John Pierpont Morgan. Morganization of the Northern Pacific, a process
   which befell many U.S. roads in the wake of the Panic of 1893, was
   handed to Morgan lieutenant Charles Henry Coster. The new president,
   beginning September 1, 1897, was Charles Sanger Mellen. Though James J.
   Hill had purchased an interest in the Northern Pacific during the
   troubled days of 1896, Coster and Mellen would advocate, and follow, a
   staunchly independent line for the Northern Pacific for the next four
   years. Only the early death of Coster from overwork, and the promotion
   of Mellen to head the Morgan-controlled New York, New Haven and
   Hartford Railroad in 1903, would bring the Northern Pacific closer to
   the orbit of James J. Hill.
   Map of Northern Pacific's route circa 1900.
   Enlarge
   Map of Northern Pacific's route circa 1900.

   In the late 1880s, the Villard regime, in another one of its costly
   missteps, attempted to stretch the Northern Pacific from the Twin
   Cities to the all-important rail hub of Chicago, Illinois. A costly
   project was begun in creating a union station and terminal facilities
   for a Northern Pacific which had yet to arrive. Rather than build
   directly down to Chicago, perhaps following the Mississippi River as
   the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy had done, Villard chose to lease the
   Wisconsin Central. Some backers of the Wisconsin Central had long
   associations with Villard, and an expensive lease was worked out
   between the two companies which was only undone by the Northern
   Pacific's second bankruptcy. The ultimate result was that the Northern
   Pacific was left without a direct connection to Chicago, the primary
   interchange point for most of the large U.S. railroads. Fortunately,
   the Northern Pacific was not alone. James J. Hill, controller of the
   Great Northern, which was completed between the Twin Cities and Puget
   Sound in 1893, also lacked a direct connection to Chicago. Hill went
   looking for a road with an existing route between the Twin Cities and
   Chicago which could be rolled into his holdings and give him a stable
   path to that important interchange. At the same time, Edward Henry
   Harriman, head of the Union Pacific Railroad, was also looking for a
   road which could connect his company to Chicago. The road both Harriman
   and Hill looked at was the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy. To Harriman,
   the Burlington was a road which paralleled much of his own, and offered
   tantalizing direct access to Chicago. For Hill as well there was the
   possibility of a high-speed link directly with Chicago. Though the
   Burlington did not parallel the Great Northern or the Northern Pacific,
   it would give them a powerful railroad in the central West. Harriman
   was the first to approach the Burlington's aging chieftain, the
   irascible Charles Elliott Perkins. The price for control of the
   Burlington, as set by Perkins, was $200 a share, more than Harriman was
   willing to pay. Hill, however, met the price, and control of the
   Burlington was divided equally at about 48.5 percent each between the
   Great Northern and the Northern Pacific. Not to be outdone, Harriman
   now came up with a crafty plan: Buy a controlling interest in the
   Northern Pacific and use its power on the Burlington to place friendly
   directors upon its board. On May 3, 1901, Harriman began his stock raid
   which would become known as the Northern Pacific Corner. By the end of
   the day he was short just 40,000 shares of common stock. Harriman
   placed an order to cover this, but was overridden by his broker, Jacob
   Schiff. Hill, on the other hand, reached the vacationing Morgan in
   Italy and managed to place an order for 150,000 shares of common stock.
   Though Harriman might be able to control the preferred stock, Hill knew
   the company bylaws allowed for the holders of the common stock to vote
   to retire the preferred. In three days, however, the Harriman-Hill
   imbroglio managed to wreak havoc on the stock market. Northern Pacific
   stock was quoted at $150 a share on May 6, and is reported to have
   traded as much as $1,000 a share behind the scenes. Harriman and Hill
   now worked to settle the issue for brokers to avoid panic. Hill, for
   his part, attempted to avoid future stock raids by placing his holdings
   in the Northern Securities Company, a move which would be undone by the
   Supreme Court in 1904 under the auspices of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
   Harriman was not immune either; he was forced to break up his holdings
   in the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific Railroad a few years
   later.

   In 1903, Hill finally got his way with the House of Morgan. Howard
   Elliott, another veteran of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, became
   president of the Northern Pacific on October 23. Elliott was a relative
   of the Burlington's crusty chieftain Charles Elliott Perkins, and more
   distantly the Burlington's great backer, John Murray Forbes. He had
   spent twenty years in the trenches of Midwest railroading, where
   rebates, pooling, expansion and rate wars had brought ruinous
   competition. Having seen the effects of having multiple railroads
   attempt to serve the same destination, he was very much in tune with
   James J. Hill's philosophy of "community of interest," a loose
   affiliation or collusion among roads in an attempt to avoid duplicating
   routes, rate wars, weak finances and ultimately bankruptcies and
   reorganizations. Elliott would be left to make peace with the
   Hill-controlled Great Northern; the Harriman-controlled Union Pacific;
   and, between 1907 and 1909, the last of the northern transcontinentals,
   the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, more commonly
   known as the Milwaukee Road.
   A Northern Pacific train travels over Bozeman Pass, June 1939.
   Enlarge
   A Northern Pacific train travels over Bozeman Pass, June 1939.

   In later years, consolidation in American railroading brought the
   Northern Pacific together with the Burlington, the Great Northern, and
   the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway on March 2, 1970 to form the
   Burlington Northern Railroad. Ironically, the merger was allowed
   despite a challenge in the Supreme Court, essentially reversing the
   outcome of the 1904 Northern Securities ruling.

Passenger Service

   The North Coast Limited was a famous passenger train operated by the
   Northern Pacific Railway between Chicago and Seattle via Bismarck,
   North Dakota. It commenced service on April 29, 1900, served briefly as
   a Burlington Northern train after the merger on March 2, 1970 and
   ceased operation the day before Amtrak began service (April 30, 1971).
   The Chicago Union Station to Minneapolis leg of the train's route was
   operated by the Chicago Burlington and Quincy railroad along its
   Mississippi River mainline through Wisconsin.

   In the mid 1970s, the North Coast Limited service was restarted by
   Amtrak as the North Coast Hiawatha operating via the Milwaukee Road
   mainline between Chicago and Minneapolis. The train continued running
   on a 3 day a week schedule until it was again discontinued in 1979.

   The North Coast Limited was the Northern Pacific's flagship train and
   the Northern Pacific itself was built along the trail first blazed by
   Lewis and Clark.

Company officers

   Presidents of Northern Pacific Railway were:
     * Josiah Perham, 1864-1866.
     * John Gregory Smith, 1866-1872.
     * George Washington Cass, 1872-1875.
     * Charles Barstow Wright, 1875-1879.
     * Frederick H. Billings, 1879-1881.
     * Henry Villard, 1881-1884.
     * Robert Harris, 1884-1888.
     * Thomas Fletcher Oakes, 1888-1893.
     * Brayton C. Ives, 1893-1897.
     * Charles Sanger Mellen, 1897-1903.
     * Howard Elliott, 1903-

Notable and preserved equipment

   Northern Pacific was known for many firsts in locomotive history and
   was a leader in the development of modern supersteam locomotives. NP
   was one of the first railroads to use Mikado 2-8-2 locomotives in the
   USA. The 4-8-4, known as the Northern on many railroads, was first
   built by Alco in 1926 for NP and designated class A. The 2-8-8-4,
   called the Yellowstone, was first built for the NP by Alco in 1928 and
   numbered 5000, class Z-5, with more built by Baldwin Locomotive Works
   in 1930. Much of this and later devopment was due to NP's need to burn
   low grade semibituminous coal strip-mined at Rosebud Montana. The coal
   thus called rosebud had a Btu 50% lower than eastern coal which meant
   that the fireboxes had to be bigger than those used by most
   locomotives. The Wootten firebox was used, which was also used by the
   anthracite railroads.

   Northern Pacific purchased Timken 1111 called the "four aces", the
   first locomotive built with roller bearings, in 1933. The Northern
   Pacific renumbered it 2626 and classified it as the sole member of
   locomotive Class A-1. It was used in passenger service in Washington,
   Oregon, Idaho and Montana until 1957 when it was retired from active
   service despite attempts to preserve the locomotive. After Timken 1111,
   NP bought only roller bearing locomotives.

   The Northern Pacific Rotary 10 steam snowplow, built in November 1907,
   is currently owned by the Northwest Railway Museum and is on display in
   Snoqualmie, Washington.

   Eight cars originally built for Northern Pacific by the Pullman Company
   in the early 1900s are now used in daily service on the Napa Valley
   Wine Train (NVRR). These cars were sold by NP to Denver and Rio Grande
   Western Railroad in 1960 and were used for the Ski Train between Denver
   and Winter Park, Colorado, before the NVRR purchased them in 1987.
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