Northern Pacific Railroad Company Stock Certificate

Northern Pacific Railroad Company Stock Certificate (image 3/[null, null, null])

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Northern Pacific Railroad Company Stock CertificateThe Northern Pacific Railway operated in the north-central region of the United States. The railroad served a large area, with extensive trackage in the states of Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. The company was headquartered first in Brainerd, Minnesota, then in St. Paul, Minnesota.HistoryThe Northern Pacific was chartered on July 2, 1864 as the first northern transcontinental railroad in the United States. It was granted some 47,000,000 acres of land in exchange for building rail transportation to an undeveloped territory. Josiah Perham (for whom Perham, Minnesota is named) was elected its first president on December 7, 1864.For the next six years, backers of the road struggled to find financing. Though John Gregory Smith succeeded Perham as president on January 5, 1866, groundbreaking did not take place until February 15, 1870, at Thompson Junction, Minnesota, 25 miles west of Duluth, Minnesota. The backing and promotions of famed Civil War financier Jay Cooke in the summer of 1870 brought the first real momentum to the company.Over the course of 1870, the Northern Pacific pushed westward from Minnesota into present-day North Dakota. It also began reaching from Kalama, Washington Territory, on the Columbia River outside of Portland, Oregon, towards Puget Sound. Four small construction engines were purchased, the Minnetonka, Itaska, Ottertail and St. Cloud, the first of which was shipped to Kalama by ship around Cape Horn. In Minnesota, the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad completed construction of its 155 mile line stretching from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Lake Superior at Duluth in 1870. It was leased to the Northern Pacific the following year, and was eventually absorbed by the Northern Pacific.In 1871, Northern Pacific completed some 230 miles of railroad on the east end of its system, reaching out to Moorhead, Minnesota, on the North Dakota border. In the west, the track extended 25 miles north from Kalama. Surveys were carried out in North Dakota protected by 600 troops from General Winfield Scott Hancock. Headquarters and shops were established in Brainerd, Minnesota, a town named for the President John Gregory Smith's wife Anna Elizabeth Brainerd.In 1872, the company put down 164 miles (264 km) of main line across North Dakota, with an additional 45 miles in Washington. On November 1, General George Washington Cass became the third president of the company. Cass had been a vice-president and director of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and would lead the Northern Pacific through some of its most difficult times. Attacks on survey parties and construction crews building into Native American homelands in North Dakota became so prevalent the company appealed for Army protection from President Ulysses S. Grant. In 1872 the Northern Pacific also opened colonization offices in Europe, seeking to attract settlers to the sparsely populated and undeveloped region it served. Survey parties accompanied by Federal troops, railroad construction, permanent settlement and development, along with the discovery of gold in nearby South Dakota, all served as a backdrop leading up to the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the defeat of General George Armstrong Custer in 1876.In 1873, Northern Pacific made impressive strides before a terrible stumble. Rails from the east reached the Missouri River on June 4. After several years of study, Tacoma, Washington, was selected as the road's western terminus on July 14. However, for the past three years the financial house of Jay Cooke and Company had been throwing money into the construction of the Northern Pacific. Like many western transcontinentals, the staggering costs of building a railroad into a vast wilderness were drastically underestimated. For a variety of reasons, led by the costs of constructing the railroad itself, Cooke and Company closed its doors on September 18. Soon, the Panic of 1873 engulfed the United States, ushering in a severe recession which... read more

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