The West was won by railroads as much as anything else. Just as the United States rapidly expanded West, the age of the railroads dawned. It was a mad rush to consolidate the vast new territories of the West by railroad. But while America was a world leader in railroads in the 1800s, the passenger trains were made largely obsolete by the dawn of the automobile and America’s vast Interstate network.
Today there are many abandoned railroads all over the United States – the longest and most famous of which is arguably Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Extension. It was a mammoth undertaking for the railroad to build a railroad all the way from Chicago over the transcontinental divide over the Rocky and Cascade mountains to the sea terminating at Seattle.
The Pacific Railroad: One Of The Last Great Transcontinental Railroads
The full name for the Milwaukee Road was “Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad.” It was a Class I railroad that once ran from 1847 to 1986. The Pacific Extension was built between 1906 and 1909. It was one of the last of the great transcontinental railroads to be built in the United States (the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869).
- Built:Â 1906-1909
The project was the result of the railroad’s directors thinking in the 1890s that they needed to build a route to the Pacific to continue to be competitive with other railroads. It was a very costly endeavor. The fact that it took only three years to complete is a remarkable testament to contemporary engineering.
At one stage, some 656 miles of its tracks were electrified – making it the longest electrified railroad in America.
Abandonment Of The Pacific Extension & Fate Of The Railroad Today
While the route was one of the most direct possible, the wisdom of the route has been questioned in that it bypassed some of the main population centers. It ran through parts of the country with little local passenger potential.
After years of financial difficulty, the Pacific Extension of Milwaukee Road was abandoned in 1984 (the rest of the railroad was merged into the Soo Line Railroad). The prolonged years of financial difficulty had the feedback loop problem of having less money to maintain the railroad, causing it to deteriorate.
The Pacific Extension ran through Montana, Idaho, and Washington. Some stretches of the railroad remain in use, but adding together the abandoned sections, it is the longest abandoned railroad in the USA.
But the end of one era is the beginning of another. Nationwide there is a trend of rails to trail, and many of the abandoned sections are being reused as trails. Parts of the abandoned sections are to be incorporated into the Great American Rail Trail – which will be the longest bike trail in the USA when it is completed.
