Northern Pacific Railway

Uncommon card · No. 180323

The Northern Pacific Railway (reporting mark NP) was an important American transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the Western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest between 1864 and 1970. It was approved and chartered by the 38th Congress of the United States in the national / federal capital of Washington, D.C., during the last years of the American Civil War (1861–1865), and received nearly 40 million acres (62,000 sq mi; 160,000 km2) of adjacent land grants, which it used to raise additional money in Europe (especially in Northern Pacific president Henry Villard's home country of the new German Empire), for construction funding. Construction began in 1870, and the main line had opened all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean, just south of the Canada–United States border, when Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" completing the line in western Montana Territory, on September 8, 1883. The railroad had about 6,800...

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