Northern Pacific Railroad started in Carlton County 150 years ago

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 other points in horse-drawn wagons. Despite the cold and snow, it was estimated that 200 people ended up gathering at a spot just a mile west of today's Carlton for the official Northern Pacific groundbreaking. It was 150 years ago - Feb. 15, 1870.

Officials used a shovel and pick-ax to fill a wheelbarrow full of soil. It was all ceremonial. No real work on the line would begin until well into the summer. Logistics got in the way of a planned first phase of the route to the Red River and Dakota Territory. Surveys of land had to be made. The company needed to find an optimum spot along the Mississippi River to cross. And, as anyone has witnessed on a drive west in Carlton County along Minnesota Highway 210, there were thick woods, bogs, swamps and lakes to navigate. Not to mention the maddening mosquitoes.

This would be the first undertaking by a single company to cross the continent by rail. In May of 1869, the first such successful effort was marked by a "golden spike" ceremony in Utah as the Central Pacific Railroad from California and the Union Pacific Railroad from the east were joined, creating the first transcontinental rail line in the United States.

The NP line from Carlton County to Spokane of 2,000 miles was expected to cost $100 million to build.

There was optimism in 1870 at the spot that would later be called Northern Pacific Junction. Capt. James Starkey of St. Paul was the contractor for the clearing of land west of the groundbreaking. He was asked to speak that day for NP engineers who had demurred. As the Duluth Minnesotian reported, Starkey encouraged those in attendance to soak up the moment, and take some earthen relics from the wheelbarrow home with them to remember the "sacred" nature of the day. "I express with ardent hope that you will treasure them up," Starkey said. "And that when the Northern Pacific Railroad is finished every possessor of one of those chips will, with the souvenir in his pocket, participate in the rough ride to the other side of the continent to witness the last spike driven in the last rail of our now commenced and then will be completed fact."

The first work after the ceremony was in bringing supplies for workers. Finding employees wasn't a challenge at first, as those working on the soon-to-be completed LS&M line that connected Duluth to St. Paul would simply switch to the route west. As surveying continued, it was decided the NP line would dip south to what is now known as Brainerd. The crossing of the Mississippi was deemed easiest there but it added miles to a line that would have to tilt north again toward Fargo. The locomotive Minnetonka was brought up from St. Paul in July, the first engine to ply NP rail as it moved supplies. It sits today at the Lake Superior Railroad Museum, along with other NP artifacts, at The Depot in Duluth.

On Aug. 29, 1870 the first actual rail was laid at the junction, connecting to the LS&M, which eventually became part of the Northern Pacific system. By Sept. 24, seven miles had been laid west of NP Junction.

Rail laid over the winter would haunt the company as spring thaws had the line sinking to the bottom of wetlands.

While the money from financier Cooke got things rolling for the NP, it wouldn't be the cure-all. His $6 million was for the 200 miles to Fargo. There would be years of ups and downs in financing, including long periods when no work was done. And NP had to coordinate things from the east and the west, generally following the trail of explorers Lewis and Clark.

The financial panic of 1873 ruined Cooke and put NP into bankruptcy. The line had reached the Missouri River by then but there wouldn't be more western work for six years.

In the fall of 1883, the line was finally connected to the ocean. There was a grand ceremony in western Montana that included former president Ulysses S. Grant. The first spike driven in Carlton County was used. But, like the ceremony 13 years before, it was mostly smoke and mirrors. Northern Pacific was using short lines in Oregon to reach Puget Sound. It didn't have its own lines until 1888.

Fights over control of the railroad continued until J.P. Morgan got ahold of it at the turn of the century. The NP proved to be a vital link for goods and passengers in the 1900s, with its North Coast Limited becoming one of the most popular and safest passenger services in the country.

People in Carlton and the region knew the impact of the NP getting its start there.

There was a 75-year diamond jubilee celebration in 1948. It had been delayed because of World War II. Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey spoke at the event.

In February of 1970, another grand effort to mark the beginning of the Northern Pacific was taken up in Carlton. It was already known that NP was going to merge, along with Great Northern, into what today is the Burlington Northern Santa Fe system. The Northern Pacific name was going away but the spirit remained. Officials, including Gov. Harold Levander, gathered at the sign west of Carlton marking the spot where work had begun - however ceremoniously - 100 years before. There was a ham and chicken dinner at the South Terrace school.

It's hard to imagine such a celebration today. And there's good reason, says Ken Buehler, director of the Lake Superior Railroad Museum in Duluth.

"We are detached from railroads now," he said. "You can't ride them. You don't see them. A train today has containers that it moves from point to point. There's no unloading of a boxcar at the station."

The small groundbreaking the Northern Pacific officials had planned 150 years ago, only to be mobbed by a crowd knowing the import of the day, will have an anniversary Saturday. It will likely be quiet there. No crowd. No excited promises of adventure to a faraway coast.

It was announced by Capt. Starkey at the groundbreaking that the pick-ax, shovel and wheelbarrow should in turn be sent to the Fond du Lac Society, Duluth Library Association and the Minnesota Historical Society. Instead, the items were shipped east, to Philadelphia, and the offices of Jay Cooke.

There is no record of what happened to these "sacred" items from a turning point in Carlton County.