The Manitoba Railroad

The panel's 550 miles stopped at Great Falls; the season did not. Between April and November 1887 Hill's contractors laid about 643 miles of track from Minot to Helena, more than any railroad had built in one season. The crews slept in freight cars stacked three storeys high that moved with the end of track. On September 8, between Havre and Fort Assinniboine, soldiers of the 20th Infantry posed with a crew to mark seven miles laid in one day. A Great Falls homesteader wrote his mother the next June that it had come through at eight.

What the plaque says

The Manitoba Railroad The railroad grade you see before you was the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad, the precursor of the Great Northern Railway. In 1887, nearly 9,000 men constructed 550 miles of track across Montana's northern Great Plains between Minot and Great Falls in record time. The line connected with the Montana Central Railroad at Great Falls and gave Manitoba Railroad owner James J. Hill a profitable link to Butte and the surrounding mining districts. Hill offered more competitive freight rates than the Northern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in an attempt to undercut the powerful transcontinental lines. As railroads competed for supremacy, Montana's cities vied for transportation facilities. Fort Benton had prospered as the head of steamboat navigation and the hub of freight and stage lines to settlements in Montana, Idaho and Canada. But the railroads initially bypassed Fort Benton and replaced steamboats as carriers. Fort Benton had to adapt to survive. In 1888, Fort Benton businessmen funded the construction of a bridge across the Missouri River. The structure funneled the lucrative Judith Basin agricultural trade into Fort Benton. The routing of the railroad into Fort Benton in the late 1880s gave it new life as a trade center and railroad shipping point rather than a steamboat port.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Decision Point — 0.2 mi
  The rise where Lewis and Clark spent ten days in 1805 deciding which river was the Missouri, against nearly every man in the party.
• Shep, Fort Benton — 11 mi
  A sheepdog who met every train at Fort Benton for five and a half years, waiting for a master who had gone home in a coffin.

More markers nearby

• Marias River — steps away
• A Montana Crossroads — 3.1 mi
• Fort Benton — 10 mi
• Fort Benton and the Mullan Road — 10 mi