558 - Northern Pacific Railroad / Bismarck Depot

In the mid- to late-19th century, railroads completely transformed the Northern Plains. Perhaps no other historical event was more important to the growth of Dakota Territory than the building of the Northern Pacific railroad. People had long relied on waterways as avenues of commerce and transportation. In fact, in Dakota Territory, most Euro-American settlements were sited along rivers–Pembina on the Red River and a series of U.S. Army forts on the Red, James, Sheyenne, and Missouri Rivers for just that reason. But in 1864, President Lincoln signed a charter, creating the Northern Pacific Railroad–one of the largest and most influential railroads in the U.S. Once completed, the line would connect the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest but, due to the financial panic of 1873, it would end up taking an extra decade to complete.

The Northern Pacific was the second transcontinental railroad. The first, the Union Pacific, was completed in 1869. Trains had proved to be more efficient than steamboats, facilitating shipment of wheat, cattle, timber, and minerals overland to the east –and bringing consumer goods and people to the west–at an unprecedented rate. Towns like Fargo, Bismarck, and Dickinson grew up along the tracks.While the government created, subsidized, regulated, and protected the Northern Pacific like it did the other transcontinental railroads, it was expected that, in return, the railroad company would help expand the nation and settle the west. To this end, the Northern Pacific was wildly successful. Congress gave the railroad 12,800 acres of land per mile of track in the states–25,600 acres per mile in the territories. This land could be sold off for development, helping to defray construction costs. Suddenly, the Northern Plains was in the midst of a population boom. Combined with the newly-passed Homestead Act, thousands of farmers, ranchers, miners, and tradespeople–most of whom were immigrants, new to the country or at least new to the plains–flooded the region. All were looking to make a better life for themselves and their families. Each contributed to a growing world economy centered on the midwest and western export of wheat, silver, gold, timber, coal, corn, and livestock.

But this rapid expansion came at great cost to those already living on the Northern Plains. Initial plans for a northern transcontinental railroad route made in the 1850s roughly followed the Lewis and Clark trail along the Missouri River. However, it became clear that a direct overland route was more advantageous, so plans were revised. Survey and construction of the new railroad route required amending the first Treaty of Fort Laramie, which reserved lands for certain tribes, but also violated the second Fort Laramie Treaty that recognized the unceded hunting lands belonging to the Sioux. The forceful westward expansion of the U.S. was met with resistance, as the US Dakota Wars spread from the Minnesota River Valley into the Dakotas in 1863 and continued throughout the railroad era.

Tatanka Iyotanke, or Sitting Bull, was a leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota and is the most celebrated leader of the indigenous efforts to preserve traditional homelands and ways of life in the face of western expansion. He encouraged the Lakota, but also the Northern Cheyenne, and other Plains tribes to resist the U.S. government’s encroachment. Most famously, he was instrumental in the defeat of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. But ultimately, the Northern Pacific land grant and construction of the railroad forced Indian tribes, especially the Lakotas, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikaras, to relinquish their treaty lands and relocate to reservations, affecting thousands of lives and altering the Northern Plains forever.

Nearly 100 years later, in 1970, the Northern Pacific Railroad, Great Northern Railway, Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway were combined to form the Burlington Northern Railroad. It absorbed additional rail lines and merged with Santa Fe Pacific Corp. in 1995 to become the Burlington Northern Santa Fe — or BNSF. Today, BNSF operates on the same central route through North Dakota that the Northern Pacific once did, though passenger services ended in the 1970s. BNSF remains one of the country’s leading freight companies, transporting a variety of agricultural, industrial, and consumer products.