Historical Marker
The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad
Big Horn County · Montana
The board's last sentence names a railroad that no longer existed. At 12:01 a.m. on March 2, 1970, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy was merged with its owners, the Great Northern and Northern Pacific, into Burlington Northern, a year before the Hardin sugar plant closed, so the branch went under the new name. Holly Sugar had built the plant north of town in 1937, and in 1948 Russell Lee, photographing the line for the Burlington's centennial, recorded Hardin sugar loaded from the warehouse into boxcars. The empty factory was torn down from December 2010.
What the plaque says
The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Once upon a time, railroads ruled Montana's transportation landscape. When the first railroad reached Montana in 1881, it began a process where, by 1916, over 5,200 miles of steel track criss-crossed the state. The railroad transformed some communities from sleepy hamlets into bustling rail centers and also created many new towns along their routes. By 1910, three transcontinental railroads crossed Montana with branch and spur lines providing rail service to almost every part of the state. The Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy (CB&Q) Railroad reached the Hardin area through its subsidiary, the Big Horn Southern Railroad company, in 1894. Over the next decade, other CB&Q subsidiary companies expanded the line in south central Montana eventually connecting all of them to the railroad's main line in 1911. The growth of the sugar beet industry in the area beginning in 1921, eventually caused the CB&Q to construct a branch line north of Hardin to connect with the Northern Pacific Railway at Custer in 1941. Farmers freighted sugar beets grown along the Bighorn River south to the Holly Sugar company plant at Hardin for processing. When the factory shut down in 1971, the CB&Q abandoned the branch line.
Where it stands
45.81833, -107.61184 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument — 19 miA battlefield you can read by its stones: white marble where soldiers fell since 1890, red granite where warriors fell since 1999.