Three Forks, Montana 1974. Little Joe #77 works during the last week of electrification. Courtesy A. Burns at American Rails.

Behind a curtain of forest, at a spot called Ravenna, a lone building stares out in silence. Its red-brick body is a hybrid, part English country house ruin, part sci-fi laboratory. Drivers between Drummond and Missoula rarely notice the out-of-place structure. Instead, generations of kids, faces plastered to back-seat windows, get a glimpse through the trees and wonder its purpose.

While floating down Belt Creek, northeast of Great Falls, there is little trace of anything human-made. The canyon goes on, wild and quiet. But after a bend in the river, 1,000 tons of steel come into view. A dozen massive girders on giant pedestals support a bridge, looming 200 feet above. A birds-eye view shows the span, two city blocks-long, disappears on both sides into dark portals. However, this is no highway; there is no pavement.

On the edge of Bozeman, the raised, curving trail along the Indreland Audubon Preserve —wet woodland on one side, open marsh with beavers, cranes, and herons on the other— abruptly ends near I-90. Was the flat-topped hill and its path created for the preserve? No, it is more than a century older.

These places share a story: They were part of the Milwaukee Road. At 11,250 miles, this was once the longest end-to-end rail network on the continent. It was also the only American railroad owning all of its track. Most notably, 656 miles were electrified, from Central Montana to Puget Sound. Passengers and freight cruised along, no smoke, no ash, via 3,000 volts DC. This included a spur here, through the Gallatin Valley and Bozeman.

The Milwaukee Road was chartered in 1847 as the Milwaukee & Waukesha. In 1850 this changed to the Milwaukee & Mississippi, joining Lake Michigan’s shore with the river. The railroad rapidly expanded in the decade after the Civil War. In 1874, it was renamed the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul Railway (CM&StP). The term “Milwaukee Road” dates to the 1880s but was not used in timetables until the 1920s and was not the company’s official name until the 1950s.

The goal of the 1880s was to head West. Lines were added between the Twin Cities and Harlowton in Central Montana, where there were already tracks. The MT Midland (aka “Jawbone”) RR had begun in 1895, linking mines in the Castle Mountains with the Northern Pacific depot at Lombard. This lively town, now silent, was at the confluence of Sixteen Mile Creek (starting in the Crazies and flowing west) and the Missouri. Just over the creek from Lombard sits the NW corner of Gallatin County.

With the coming of the Milwaukee, Lombard had two major railways for decades. However, the town had no roads in or out; no buggies, no cars. People came and left via rail or the river. Lombard’s mayor for years was Chinese-American hotel proprietor Billy Kee. He ran things from his High Point Inn, which opened in 1897. Kee was known for his flexibility. When he went to bed he left a light on in the lobby and the register book open. Guests from the trains scribbled in their names and picked a key. Lombard was also famous for its long curving trestle over the Mighty Mo.

Circa 1912, interior of part of Bozeman’s Milwaukee Road Depot. This is now the site of the Bozeman Library.

The Milwaukee Road then pushed west to Tacoma, via Butte, Missoula, and Spokane. The company called the full route “Lines West.” Freight service to/from Chicago began July 4, 1909. Local passenger services started the next July, and the long-distance Columbian and Olympian from the Midwest to Montana and Washington debuted May 28, 1911. Soon after, a spur to Seattle was completed, as well as a tunnel under Snoqualmie Pass. In Montana, a spur was constructed off the Harlowton-to-Lewistown route through Great Falls, ending at Agawam by Choteau. Great Falls still has its classic depot, its 135-foot tower still proudly emblazoned with the railway’s name.

When it was done, Lines West was the shortest route between Chicago and the coast, 130 mi. less than the Northern Pacific. This was crucial, as Shanghai and Yokohama are hundreds of miles closer to Seattle-Tacoma than to ports like Long Beach.


The next phase was equally ambitious: electrifying most of the route from Harlowton to Seattle. This began in early 1914 and ran through WWI. All of this electricity was from Montana. The first hydroelectric dams on the Missouri, between Helena and Great Falls (Canyon Ferry Dam from 1898, replaced 1954; Black Eagle Dam built 1890, rebuilt 1924; Ryan Dam from 1915) supplied power to the eastern section, while the western section was powered by a dam on the Clark Fork at Thompson Falls. The dam at Black Eagle, mainly providing power for its huge copper smelter, is why Great Falls is called the Electric City. Helena had municipal power even earlier, 1888/1889, a half-century before the rural South was electrified.      

The dams sent 100,000 volts AC to 27 substations between Harlowton and Tacoma. There it was stepped-down and single-phased to the 3kV DC used by the engines. The brick building at Ravenna, named after the Italian city, was one of these substations. It’s well known that Cantonese workers laid much of the track in the West, namely the Transcontinental from California to Utah. What’s less known is that French and French-Canadians felled trees in forests adjacent the railways. Then, Italian immigrants turned timber to lumber and built the infrastructure surrounding the rails: water tanks, mail bag forks, and poles supporting the Milwaukee’s overhead lines. This was especially true in Montana. Frenchtown has an appropriate name, and the old Italian families in Missoula, Great Falls, Helena, and Livingston have railway stories to fill a book.

For many years, General Electric box cabs ran the freight and local passenger trains. Later, the famous 12-axle, 5,500 HP “Little Joes” were used. These were originally built by GE for the Soviet Union. As the Cold War began, Uncle Sam stepped in and barred the sale, so the Milwaukee Road purchased the lot. The “toads” (mechanics) and engineers called them “little Joe Stalin’s engines,” soon shortened to “Little Joes.” These iconic machines were as loved by the public as those who drove and maintained them.

The fishhook-shaped route in our valley split from the main line (Lombard to Butte) near Three Forks (see map). Much of this track had been laid by Gallatin Valley Electric RR, which also ran the Bozeman trolley. The Milwaukee Road purchased the whole package in 1910. Trolley service ended during the Depression, but full trains and the slower, shorter “Gallagator” continued in the valley over the decades. Maps and timetables from the 1940s – 1960s show freight and passenger service to Bozeman. Old timers at the Western Cafe and local personality Donna Daems recounted how, when Ice Pond Road still intersected with South Black in WWII and the 1950s, people would race to cross before the oncoming train. Also, that a whistle-stop north of town was named after a farmer’s wife who always met the train wearing a kimono. The rail officials mangled the spelling, giving us Camona.

Unfortunately, it was not to last. Company leaders made a series of bizarre decisions in the 60s and 70s. Money was bleeding from the redundant rails in the Midwest (Iowa had a grid of Milwaukee lines, and all competing with other railroads), but the top brass deemed Lines West was to blame. Later research shows that Lines West expenses were doubly logged at times, meaning they were half of that reported. In perhaps the craziest move, during the 1973 oil embargo, Milwaukee managers decided to scrap electrification and switch all routes to diesel. The electrons stopped flowing in 1974. Not surprisingly, the trains stopped altogether in 1979/1980. This is also the  same time Bozeman lost passenger service via the Northern Pacific track.

Circa 1955, 32 mi. N. of Bozeman, the MR “Olympian Hiawatha” passenger train exits a tunnel just east of the more famous Eagle Nest. Courtesy A. Burns at American Rails.

The Milwaukee Road is worth remembering. It is a great example of what vision and hard work can accomplish, and what mismanagement and apathy can ruin. It’s also a good example of both gained and lost opportunities. Sections of the route have remained trails, like Thompson Park near Butte (which crosses the Continental Divide Trail) and Linear Trail in Bozeman. More sections should have been preserved. In the future, more sections could still be connected. Imagine being able to ride or walk from the Museum of the Rockies to Lazy TH Estates. Or to Bozeman Hot Springs. Or beyond. (Also envision Bozeman having passenger service again. Let’s make this happen.)

Remembering the Milwaukee Road requires more than just enthusiast sites and the occasional article. The route needs more visibility. Linear Trail and the Audubon preserve could use historical markers mentioning its significance. There would be no public right-of-way from near campus to Downtown and through the wetland without this history. This is as much a part of Bozeman as the Emerson or the Ellen. We’re remembering the thousands of employees and the many more thousands of passengers who experienced the Milwaukee Road. When walking or riding these trails, you’re retracing the path of countless people, a legacy of movement.