612 - Main Street of the NW

Imagine Main Street in your hometown. Picture the storefronts, the passers by, the cars driving up and down the road. It is likely the hub of the city, the center-point from which all activity and opportunity grows. In its conception, the Northern Pacific Railway was referred to as the “Main Street of the Northwest.” It established a railroad route from the evergreen shores of Lake Superior in Minnesota to the mountainous coast of the Puget Sound in Washington that nearly parallels the path Lewis and Clark took when they ventured across the western United States.

Construction began in 1870, and the new railroad promised great economic and travel opportunities. Goods from Dakota Territory could be delivered to markets on the west coast, and ships carrying imports from across the Pacific Ocean could transport merchandise east. Settlers could travel to new places. Theodore Roosevelt himself rode the train into the Dakotas and built two ranches within miles of the railroad, the Maltese Cross and Elkhorn.

The first passenger train arrived in Bismarck on June 5, 1873. Linda Slaughter, who lived at Camp Hancock with her husband, an army surgeon, wrote, ““At length there came a day when we stood with rejoicing hearts beside the railroad track...and heard with joy unspeakable the whistle of the locomotive that told us our long isolation was at an end. The Northern Pacific railroad was completed to [Bismarck]! The first construction cars had come, and the days of danger, of fear and of privation, the days of real pioneering in Bismarck were at an end forever.”

However, supporters of the railroad faced enormous obstacles. Private investors failed to keep the railroad funded, leading to the Panic of 1873 and an international recession. Furthermore, the federal government attempted to give the railroad land that, according to tribal tradition, treaties, or both, belonged to the Lakotas, Mandans, Hidatsas, Arikaras, and other tribes, some of whom resisted with force. The Northern Pacific Railway also threatened wildlife in the area, such as the American bison.