Three historic Upper Midwest Railroads Make up the subject matter of this history:

1 - The Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie R.R.
2 - Wisconsin Central RR
3 - Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic R.R.

Chronologically the forerunner or grandfather of the present Soo Line System was the Iron Mountain R.R. incorporated Feb. 22, 1855, from which after twenty-one sales, conveyances and consolidations the road emerged as the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic Ry., and after 37 years following the start of the venture it reached the city of Duluth.

The Wisconsin Central Ry., next in order of age, was organized in 1870. It was the outgrowth of three railroads that received Federal Land Grants. It was operated, on lease, by the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie R.R. from April, 1909 to January 1, 1961.

The Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie R.R. had its origin in 1883 as the Minneapolis, Sault Ste. Marie & Atlantic Ry. Both became commonly known as The Soo Line.

The three roads have colorful histories though not similar. Each had its own sphere of influence but had physical connections with each other.

Soon after the original building and organization of the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic Ry., and the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Ry., both fell under the spell of the Canadian Pacific Ry in 1888. After the Wisconsin Central Ry. was leased by the M. St .P.& S .S. M. Ry., it too, came under the protection of the of the Canadian Pacific Ry.

There was plenty of Land Grant to help the formation of the Marquette, Houghton & Ontonagon Ry. (1862) and Mackinac & Marquette R.R. in 1879 that was later to be known as the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic Ry. However, there was no prize of land to help the builders of the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie or of the Minneapolis & Pacific Ry., the two railroads that formed the back-bone of the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Ry.

Two factors, in their time, changed the course of history:

1:   The invention and perfection of the steam locomotive, without which the interior of our country would have remained a vast wilderness. Settlements would only have continued along the seacoast, lakes and navigable rivers. The progress of commercial endeavor and settlement of all sections of our country began with the coming of the railroads.

2:   In the early days of the United States iron was smelted from small deposits of low grade ores found throughout the Eastern part of the nation. As the supply of ore was exhausted in one location it became necessary for the forges or furnaces to move to new territory. The United States seemed destined to be an agricultural nation. The discovery of great iron deposits in the Lake Superior Region was perhaps the greatest single factor in shaping the century which followed.

 The Northern Peninsula of Michigan is a part of the oldest section of the world. Lying in the Laurention Mountain Ranger, it was the first land that pushed up from under the seas in the formation of the land masses of the North American Continent.

Four waves of white men, each bent on a different mission, followed the Indians. They left their marks in the history of the wilderness country that became the Northern Michigan Peninsula, Northern Wisconsin and Northeastern Minnesota.

After the Jesuit Missionaries, in their zeal for the souls of men, had established their missions, there came the Fur Trading Companies in their search for riches and power. Years after their debut came the surveyors, who mapped the wilderness, followed by explorers who found timber, iron and copper and other minerals in abundance. All of these travelers, men of God, of business and exploration, had no better means of transportation than that related in the earliest recordings of the human race -- travel by boat and on foot. When the pioneers came in the 1840's the wilderness country was old.

Loggers and lumbermen were known to be in the wilderness country in the 1840's, where they depended on water to bring logs to the mill and to take lumber to market.

Copper was found in abundance on the Kewaunee Peninsula, the copper country of Michigan in 1843, and started a boom in the same year. Iron ore was round near the present city of Negaunee, Mich.,

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(Missing Part) ore miners took 300 pounds of ore out on their backs 12 miles to Lake Superior. Means of transportation to get ore or pig iron to Marquette, for ultimate lake shipping to a market and the steel mills in Pennsylvania and Ohio, was a major concern of 150 people who made up the total population of the Marquette area in 1850. 

Thus the first effort to construct a road to get ore to dock-site in Marquette was made in 1851. Various means were tried and failed. An operation was finally attained in 1855, but proved expensive. Sufficient ore, however, was gotten to Marquette  so that 100 tons was loaded, with wheelbarrows, onto the deck of the Brig "Columbia" August 14, 1855. On the 17th she passed through the Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, which were completed and opened in June 1855, the first ship to pass through the Locks with ore. Marquette became the first great ore shipping port in the United States.

The wilderness had shed it's bark. Treasures locked up in mother earth for billions of years were opened. Men came in hundreds and thousands and there was set in motion a revolution in business that was heard around the world.

Why The Soo Line

In 1854 a sizeable flourmill was built in the village of St. Anthony, near St. Anthony Falls, so named by Father Hennipen when he first saw them in 1680. Another village, then consisting of a few houses, whose limits had been included in the reservation of Fort Snelllng on the west side of the Mississippi River, opposite St. Anthony, had been named Minneapolis. The village of Minneapolis outgrew St, Anthony and in 1872, with a population of 12,000, the villages were merged to form the city of Minneapolis.

Lumber mills filled both banks of the river north of St. Anthony Falls, while below the falls a young milling industry was rearing its head to challenge older established flour mills at Milwaukee, Chicago and St. Louis for supremacy in the flour milling world. 

William D. Washburn, later to be the principal promoter, builder and first president or the Soo Line, arrived in Minneapolis in 1857 from Livermore, Me. He was made secretary and agent for the Minneapolis Mill Company which was incorporated in 1856 with Cadwallader C. Washburn, his brother, as one of the owners. The mill company controlled the water power on the west side of the falls.

Minnesota, in 1860, produced 7,515,906 bushels of all grains, while in 1880, 76,003,139 bushels were grown. While mills had been operating for many years. “The great growth of the flour mills came in the period from 1870 to 1890. In 1870 the mills were producing perhaps two hundred thousand barrels of flour annually -- at the end, seven million. By 1890, Minneapolis was the leading milling center, not only of the United States, but the world”. (8)

The big problem had always been transportation and freight rates. The millers “attempted to get steamships to come up the river to the falls, instead of stopping at St. Paul. Even after rail connections with Milwaukee and Chicago were completed, these efforts did not cease, for the millers wished to play off the St. Louis commission men against those of the Lake Ports”.(8) As early as May 6th and 7th, 1869 the Minneapolis Tribune “argued for the need of lines of river steamers as a defense against railroad monopoly”.(8)  The editor contended that ships “should carry the flour down the Mississippi so that there would be a choice of several routes to the east” and also that there should be boats on the St. Croix and the Minnesota rivers to bring in the wheat. The direct rail connection with Chicago provided a service that the river steamers could not equal".(8)

The first railroad to reach the present city of Minneapolis was the St, Paul & Pacific (Great Northern) which built a line from St. Paul to St. Anthony in 1862, providing easier and faster service to the east even though it was only 10 miles. The road was not extended west until 1864, when it was built to Elk River. In 1865 the Minnesota Central Railway (C. M. St. P. & P.) reached Minneapolis by way of Faribault and Mendota, giving the city its first through railroad to Milwaukee and Chicago. The Minnesota Valley R,R, (C. St .P. M. & O.) began construction at Mendota in the same year toward Mankato and Sioux City. The following year, both these lines built from Mendota to St. Paul. In 1872 the Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry., (C.M.S.P.&P.) completed the line begun in 1869 from St. Paul to Winona for a through route to Chicago via La Crosse. The C. St. P. M. & O. formed a connection to Chicago with the C.B.&Q. in 1873. The C.B.&Q. did not reach St. Paul until 1886, the same year that the Wisconsin Central established service from the Twin Cities to Chicago.

The Minneapolis of earlier days had little of the transportation available today and what they had of railroad transportation was not friendly to the millers. Milwaukee had flour mills as did Chicago. It is possible that the flour milling interests of Milwaukee were heavily interested in the first railroad that reached Minneapolis, from Chicago and Milwaukee. This railroad in and attempt to stop or retard the growth of the Minneapolis milling industry “quoted lower rates on grain from farms and towns on their own line to Milwaukee than to Minneapolis”.(9) And when other railroads reached Minneapolis from Chicago, they were, likewise, unfriendly.

The Lake Superior & Mississippi Railway (now N. P.) was built from St. Paul to Duluth and opened to traffic August 1, 1870 and the millers had turned their attention to the Lake Superior route to the east. When this line was building the millers had vainly, "tried to get the southern terminus at St. Anthony"(8) But when that failed they secured the charter that had been issued in 1853 to the Minnesota Western Railroad, which road never reached the construction stage, and built a line of their own from St. Anthony to Merrian Jct. (White Bear Lake) to form a connection with the line to Duluth. This was the beginning

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the M. St. ?  is now owned by the Northern Pacific Ry). When this was completed, the millers began to direct shipments to the Lake Superior routes.(8) They also put steamers on the Great Lakes to carry their products. It was "stated in 1872 that the millers were shipping three-fourths of their flour to the eastern market by way of Duluth. Probably the proportion was not always so great, but they could and did use this alternate route as a club over the Chicago Lines to extort lower rates".(8) The Chicago Lines countered by "offering lower rates to the east on wheat than on flour; too, they sent their own buyers into the wheat fields, bought up the wheat and let the millers have it only on condition that they  shipped their flour via Chicago. In any case, the lake was frozen good part or the year and during those months the millers were at the mercy of the railroads". (8) 

The millers then continued the construction of the M. & St. L. to Albert Lea, where they made a connection with the Rock Island Lines. Feeling secure on the question of freight rates to Chicago and the east, they sold out their holdings in the M. & St. more business from its connections if it was not always demanding more for the Northwest". (9) They found themselves back again where they started.

On April 7, 1873 Israel Washburn, then Governor of Maine and a brother of William D., in speaking before the Minneapolis Board of Trade, urged the construction of a railroad from Minneapolis to Sault Ste. Marie and Montreal. He pointed out that these cities lie in an almost straight line along the 45th parallel and would afford by far the most direct and shortest route between Minneapolis and Montreal, Portland, Boston and New York. He felt "it would free Minneapolis from the dominance of the Chicago railroads, who were believed to be "hostile" to the milling interests".(8) It would not only give a "shorter route to the Atlantic Coast but would open a rich territory in Wisconsin and Michigan naturally tributary to Minneapolis". (8)

In 1877 a new figure in the field of transportation in Minnesota came to light in the person of James J. Hill. Mr. Hill was interested in the Red River Transportation Co. operating steamships on the Red River between Moorhead, Minn., and Fort Garry (now Winnipeg). He, together with Donald Smith, Chief Commissioner of the Hudson Bay Company, his cousin George Stephen, President of the Bank Of Montreal (later Lord Mount Stephen, first President of the Canadian Pacific Railway), Richard B. Angus, General Manager of the same bank and Norman W. Kittson of St. Paul, a retired fur trader from Pembina, reorganized the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad under the name St. Paul Minneapolis & Manitoba Railroad (now Great Northern). Mr. Hill became General Manager, and in 1890, following another reorganization, he became President of the Great Northern Railways which corporation took over the assets or the "Manitoba" road, as it was called.

On October 1, 1880, the Canadian Government turned over to a private enterprise the work of building the railroad which it was committed to construct across Canada, and a syndicate, including Messrs. Stephen, Angus and Hill, was formed for that purpose. The syndicate incorporated the Canadian Pacific Railway Company February 16, 1881 and took over the 135-mile line from Selkirk eastward toward Lake Superior; also, the 65-mile line due south from Fort Garry (Winnipeg) to Pembina on the International Boundary, parallel to the Red River, which had been built by the Government. The new railroad also took over a line the Grand Trunk had constructed westward from Montreal to Callander, Ontario (now Bonfield). It was under lease to the Northern Pacific but the lease was broken when the Northern Pacific was placed in receivership in 1874. 

Mr. Hill had entertained the idea of continuing the line from Callander to Sault Ste. Marie and of building a branch of the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba to meet the Marquette Houghton & Ontonogn Railway, and the Detroit, Mackinaw & Marquette Railway, expecting to use his St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway as a connecting link to the Canadian Pacific Line at Pembina. Mr. Hill's plan was rejected, as it was finally decided to build an all Canadian route even though it would cost more and traverse a barren country. Disappointed in this, Mr. Hill resigned as a director and member of the Executive Committee of the Canadian Pacific on May 3, 1883, and remained an arch enemy of that company the rest of his life.

Mr. Hill possessed a dominating personality which was augmented by the success of his first big business ventures and increased his mental concept of always being right. His philosophy seemed to be that if people knew when they were well off, they should do as they were told. He became a powerful individual and on his railroad was a law unto himself. His attempted dominance of other people hit a snag with the Yankees in Minneapolis. In those days strong willed and determined men had no laws to hold them within bounds or associations of the same kindred businesses to establish codes of ethics as were established later. There was no Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroads and often the president of a railroad was an autocrat. That type of businessman played hard with others and played for keeps.

The Minneapolis men were not timid souls, and, being successful in their own right would not be pushed around. Something is missing quite simple, yet not always practiced, to see them through whatever difficulties were in store for them and their reliance was not in vain". (8)

William D. Washburn was also of the dominating type. In the U.S. Senate, where he served with distinction, his stubborn adherence to his own convictions was carried to a point of conflict with members of his party. He was "dogmatic and sometimes arrogant and insisted always upon doing things in his own way". (6) He was a lawyer and a partner of his brother Cadwallader (one-time Governor of Wisconsin) along with John Crosby, his brother-in-law, in the original firm of Washburn, Crosby & Company. "He subsequently owned mills of his own. He was a genius and had unbounded faith in the future of Minneapolis and the Northwest".(6) Here were two like personalities, Hill and Washburn, that clashed.

As has been pointed out, the millers were having difficulty with the Chicago Lines to establish low freight rates. To make it harder for the Minneapolis millers, the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway built a line from St. Cloud, Minn., to Hinckley where a connection was made with the St. Paul & Duluth R.R. for Superior and Duluth. New flour mills at both Superior and Duluth were built. They enjoyed a differential in rates over Minneapolis, creating a situation that to the Minneapolis millers was a threat to their continued prosperity.

As a result of this and the action of the Minneapolis-Chicago Lines in keeping in force high freight rates to large consuming centers, favoring as they did older mills on their lines at Milwaukee and Chicago, threatened the very existence of the younger fast-growing industry in Minneapolis.

Today there is good reason to believe that had the Chicago Lines given the millers rates to the east that would have kept them in a competitive bracket with other mills, and had the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitobe Ry. stood fairly between the two milling centers of Minneapolis and the Head-of-the-Lakes, rather than favoring the latter, the Soo Line might never have come into being. Under the circumstances, an eastern outlet by some other route than Chicago was desired and much talked about for some years. It was felt that Minneapolis was at the mercy of Chicago, as all rail routes to the east passed through that city and the railway companies were influenced more by the demands of the larger city than the needs of the smaller. Chicago, as the break-bulk point, practically dominated Minneapolis freight rates. Even with the lake competition, the millers were faced with high rates and particularly for fast freights and for all freights in the winter, they were at a disadvantage. "It was this factor of competition that made the construction of the Soo Line from Minneapolis to Sault Ste. Marie so significant". (10)

(5)   Williarn C. Edgar  'The Medal of Gold"
(8) Chas B. Kuhlmann  The Minneapolis Flour Mills .
(9)  Edwin C. Washburn "The 17"
(10)  Mildred Hartsaugh (in her Thesis Minnesota Historical Society)