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It was supposed to be an "impromptu" act, a quiet ceremony more for employees than the general public. There was likely good reason to keep things on the down-low. While the Northern Pacific Railroad had been buoyed the month before by a cash infusion from Jay Cooke, it really was nowhere near ready to begin the Herculean task of laying a rail line from Lake Superior to the Pacific Ocean.
But word got out. People traveled by rail from Duluth and Superior on the new Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad line that had been cut through the dalles of the St. Louis River. They came from the west and...