The Northern Pacific Railway (reporting mark NP) was a railway that operated across the northern tier of the western United States. Construction began in 1870 and the main line opened all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific when former president Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in central Montana on Sept. 8, 1883. The railroad served a large area, including extensive trackage in the states of Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. In addition the company had international lines to Winnipeg, Manitoba, and southeastern British Columbia, Canada. The company was headquartered first in Brainerd, Minnesota, then in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In 1970 it merged with other lines to form the Burlington Northern Railroad. At the end of 1967 it operated 6784 route-miles, not including the 19 miles of Class II subsidiary Walla Walla Valley.
Read more about Northern Pacific Railway: Divisions, Passenger Service, Presidents, Chief Engineers, Notable and Preserved Equipment, Trademark Design and Origin
Famous quotes containing the words northern, pacific and/or railway:
“There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)