Ever Bigger and Better

The railroad company shown on the front of this post card is one of the

ancestors of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad of today. It all began with the small St. Paul & Pacific and, by the time of his passing in 1917, the GN was a transcontinental carrier of more than 8,000 miles. This website provides a great short history of James Hill's involvement in the railroad history: https://www.bnsf.com/news-media/railtalk/heritage/jjhill.html The Great Northern Railway (GN) was the result of the foresight of James Jerome Hill. Hill was a Canadian-American businessman who settled in St. Paul, Minnesota. At 18, he began his career in the steamboat trade, and after 20 years, he became interested in investing and joined a group of powerful investors called the “Associates.” The Associates purchased the nearly bankrupt St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (SP&P) in 1878, and a year later, the SP&P properties were reorganized as the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba (SPM&M), with Hill becoming president in 1882. Hill became known as “The Empire Builder” as his dedication to railroad expansion led to the growth and development of the United States. Over the next three decades, Hill pursued the expansion of his rail line north to Canada and west toward the Pacific coast. Also in 1889, the railroad (now the Minneapolis & St. Cloud Railway) was renamed Great Northern Railway. GN’s Pacific Coast expansion began in 1890 near Havre, Montana, with the final spike connecting Seattle to the East driven near Scenic, Washington, in 1893. Then he purchased the Northern Pacific Railroad as well as the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. These three railroad lines would become part of Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) when they merged with the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway (SP&S) in 1970, fulfilling one of Hill’s lifelong dreams more than 50 years after his death. BN merged with the Santa Fe Railway in 1995 to create BNSF.

The picture on the front of the post card is a 3600 horsepower F-45 "cowl" unit showing off its new "Big Sky Blue" paint scheme in 1969. The post card was published by Lyman E. Cox of Sacramento, California. I have 19 of his post cards in my collection. The picture was provided to him courtesy of the Great Northern Railway.

Forerunner of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad

The locomotive on the front of this post card is part of Northern Pacific Railway's First North Coast Limited, shortly after the train was put into service in April of 1900.

The North Coast Limited was a named passenger train operated by the Northern Pacific Railway between Chicago and Seattle via Bismarck, North Dakota. It started on April 29, 1900, and continued as a Burlington Northern Railroad train after the merger on March 2, 1970 with Great Northern Railway and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. The next year, it ceased operations after the trains which left their originating stations on April 30, 1971, the day before Amtrak began service (May 1, 1971), arrived at their destinations. Our good friends at Wikipedia provide this short history of the Northern Pacific Railway as well as the details above about the North Coast Limited. The Northern Pacific Railway (reporting mark NP) was a transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest. Congress chartered the Northern Pacific Railway Company on July 2, 1864, with the goals of connecting the Great Lakes with Puget Sound on the Pacific, opening vast new lands for farming, ranching, lumbering and mining, and linking Washington and Oregon to the rest of the country. It was given nearly forty million acres (62,000 sq mi; 160,000 km2) of land grants, which it used to raise money in Europe for construction. 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 western Montana on September 8, 1883. The Northern Pacific was headquartered in Minnesota, first in Brainerd, then in Saint Paul. It had a tumultuous financial history; the NP merged with other lines in 1970 to form the Burlington Northern Railroad, which in turn merged with the Santa Fe to become the BNSF Railway in 1996.

I have posted other post cards by the publisher of this one: Bob Fremming of Dallas, Wisconsin. I cannot find much information about him on line, but he was a prolific publisher. There are samples of his cards on line at Etsy, Ebay, and other auction sites.

World Famous - at one time....

This is the third in a series of three related posts. They are all post cards of trains related to the current Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF). These three post cards have pictures of trains from the companies that merged to form the BNSF. The train in this post card is a Santa Fe passenger consist passing through the Cajon Pass.

This pass is notable because it was with the completion of this pass that gave the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway the status of transcontinental railroad.

Fortune magazine named the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (Santa Fe) the Nation's Number One Railroad in 1948. The Santa Fe was the only transcontinental train route from Chicago to Los Angeles until December 22, 1982 - when the takeover by the Union Pacific Railroad of the Missouri Pacific Railroad became effective. The Santa Fe railway The Santa Fe was the brainchild of Cyrus K. Holliday. He helped to found the city of Topeka in Kansas and quickly realized that the city needed to be connected to the rest of the country in order to thrive economically. Being a lawyer by trade, he wrote the charter for the Atchison and Topeka Railroad Company in 1859. It's purpose was to connect the two cities (Topeka and Atchison) by railroad as it followed the route of the Santa Fe Trail. The charter was approved by the Kansas Territory governor Samuel Medary on February 11, 1859. Holliday was named a director and president of the new railroad on September 17, 1860. The company was given the right to raise one and half million dollars in stock, which the board realized could only be raised through the selling of land rights. Through the normal political machinations, the Santa Fe was included in the Pacific Railroad Act of 1863. When the Act was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1863 the Santa Fe received the odd numbered sections of land for ten sections in width on each side of the track. The name of the company was also changed in 1863 to include “Santa Fe” because it seemed like Cyrus Holliday’s dream could come true. In 1867 Holliday was successful in raising funds within some of the local counties when they $350,000 worth of bonds. In 1868 the company purchased 338,766 acres of land from the Potawatomi Indians, which lands provided financial support when the lands were then resold to the new settlers. With these finances and the charter in hand, a ceremony was held on October 30, 1868 to celebrate the beginning of the building of the railroad. By 1870 gross revenue reached $127,000. The railroad reached the town of Atchison on May 13, 1872; you can imagine the celebration that day!! When the company was included in the Pacific Railroad Act, the grant of all that land was contingent on the rails reaching the border of Colorado before March 3, 1873. Granada, Colorado was reached on December 28, 1872 – 3 months to spare! The company continued to expand and grow attempting to reach the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. There were many challenges to overcome, some were geological, some were financial (though not significant), and some came from the competition. Most notable of these was the Colorado Railroad War between the Denver & Rio Grande and the Santa Fe railroads – which was won in court by the Santa Fe. By 1879, the railroad’s net income was $3.5 million. On November 15, 1885, the day that the final track work over the Cajon Pass in southern California was completed, the Santa Fe officially achieved transcontinental status. While the railroad was the brainchild of Mr. Holliday, that child was brought to life, nurtured and grew strong thanks to the efforts of William Barstow Strong; he was elected vice president and general manager in 1877 and spearheaded the developments that led to the completion of the transcontinental railroad.

The post card was printed in 1957.

I know that it was 1957 because the "Place Stamp Here" box has a Curt Otto Teich code in it: The post card was printed by a Curt Teich company. That is what the dividing line between the message and address tells us.
It was published by Western Publishing & Novelty Company out of Los Angeles, California. The company began in 1932 with a focus only on Southern California related tourist materials and post cards; it ended sometime in the 1970s.

The One that Started It All

Although I did not know it at the time, this post card was to become the first card in my Train Post Card collection. I was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest on June 5, 1982.

One of the guys in the class one year before me knew my passion for trains. He gave this to me as an "ordination card" on that occasion. It measures five and half inches tall and eight and three quarters inches wide. I kept the post card because a) I do love trains, and b) Patrick and I were good friends. I did not know at the time, that it would be the first card in my train post card collection - which today numbers 3,014 cards from around the world. I seriously committed to collecting post cards the year that England was the feature country at Klondike Days here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was in the 1990s. I wanted to collect something related to trains that would not take up much room. They had a huge selection of train post cards at their exhibit for sale. I committed and bought one of each!!

This post card features a partial history of the development of what is know today as the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad Company. [Of course, at this time (1982) the Santa Fe part was still its own railroad company.] the train on the far left was built in 1892; the next one is from 1923; that is followed by a 1934 model of the "Zephyr". The second from the right is a 1955 diesel engine (an E-9 unit) as is the one on the far right, which is a GP-30 from 1962.
They all got together to celebrate "A Century of Locomotives".

The picture was taken by the Burlington Northern Railroad, as the company was known back in the 1970s. The post card itself was published by Lyman E. Cox from Sacramento, California - the home of the California State Railroad Museum.

Then and Now

The bridge in this post card was designed by the famous architect, Ralph Modjeski, the chief engineer for the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge which began construction in 1933. The Missouri Valley Bridge & Iron Company built the bridge by cantilevering it out from rock walls on both sides of the canyon.

The first steel for the bridge arrived on site on May 18, 1911, and was lowered by derrick to the bottom of the gorge. Men climbed down rope ladders to attach cables to the steel beams and the steel was hoisted back up both sides of the canyon as the beams were needed. The first train crossed the bridge only four months later on September 17, 1911.

The crossing of the Crooked River played a critical role in the competition to build a railroad up the Deschutes River Valley. The incentive for railroad construction was reaching the vast stands of timber south of Bend. The Oregon Trunk Railway, owned by Jim Hill of the Great Northern Railway, started up the west side of the Deschutes. In the meantime the Des Chutes Railroad, owned by Edward Harriman of the Union Pacific, started up the east side. At 126 miles both railroads had to cross a major tributary of the Deschutes, the Crooked River. There was only one place where the cliffs on both sides were close enough to build a bridge. Jim Hill had obtained the rights to the location when his Oregon Trunk Railroad acquired the Central Oregon Railroad Company on December 1, 1909. The Central Oregon had laid no track and the rights to the bridge site were its principal asset. Hill's acquisition of the location forced Harriman to negotiate a settlement whereby the Oregon Trunk would own almost the entire line from the Columbia to Bend but Harriman's company would have the right to use the track.

Through a series of mergers the rail line and the bridge has become part of the BNSF Railway. The Union Pacific still has the right to use the track.

This is what the bridge looks like today:

The post card was printed and published by the H. H. Tammen Curio Company. They were located at 1516 Arapahoe Street in Denver, Colorado from 1896 to 1953. The picture on the front does not have a white border around it, and the back is divided. From this we can conclude that the post card was printed some time between 1912 and 1915.